empty corner

We had to destroy the village in order to save it

2011-01-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

No, really! I mean, really!

This is a before and after of the village of Tarok-Kolache. Spencer Ackerman has more.

Why Assange and not Woodward

2010-12-10T20:36:00.000-08:00

Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy has a good question. Why are there no calls to prosecute, assassinate or otherwise inconvenience Bob Woodward who has had a lucrative career peddling highly sensitive leaks, while the establishment (including establishment journalists) is apoplectic about Julian Assange. The answer Walt provides is eminently reasonable. Woodward is an insider, a member of the elite, and:

Elites like the idea of being in charge, and they don't really trust "the people" in whose name they govern, even though it is the latter that pays their salaries, and fights their wars. Elites like the sense of power and status that being "on the inside" conveys: it's a turn-on to know things that other people don't, and it can be so darn inconvenient when the public gets wind of what the current "best and brightest" are actually doing.

Obama's journey

2010-12-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

From OpenLeft:

Headline of the day

2010-11-23T19:08:00.000-08:00

So the much talked about negotiations between Karzai and the Taliban with the help of NATO turns out to be a scam. At least we got this headline out of it.

Stephen Walt draws some deeper lessons:

Our strategy in Afghanistan based on "nation-building." We hope to create Afghan institutions that can run the place so we can leave. That goal, in turn, is predicated on the belief that the United States and its allies have sufficient knowledge and skill to create something that has never existed before: an effective, efficient, legitimate, Western-style state in Afghanistan. Accomplishing this task requires that we understand the underlying culture, the history, and the cross-cutting cleavages within Afghan society, and that we have sufficiently intimate knowledge of the players to know whom to work with and whom to shun.

There was already plenty of evidence that this knowledge was lacking. After all, back in 2002 we thought Hamid Karzai was the ideal choice to lead a new Afghan government. Now, nearly eight years later, he's proven to be a disappointment (at best). And this latest fiasco merely underscores the degree to which we are out of our depth there. There's no question we can kill a lot of Taliban (or people we suspect might be Taliban, or unfortunate civilians who get in the way), but successful nation-building requires a lot more than that.

So here's Rule No. 1 for would-be Afghan nation-builders: If you can't tell the Taliban from the imposters without a scorecard, maybe you shouldn't be playing this game.

Something pretty

2010-10-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

(h/t John Ballard)

The increasingly petulant John Burns

2010-10-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

Documents from the latest Wikileaks release covering the Iraq War is available at the Guardian and the New York Times. A lot of the information that the New York Times did not see as fit to print in real-time is available in these documents. However, the pride of place in the Time's coverage goes to a hit piece on Julian Assange, the founder and face of Wikileaks.
Guardian:
New York Times:

The piece repeats the canard that Wikileaks previous document dump put lives in danger, despite the Pentagon's admission that no harm to anyone in Afghanistan could be tied to the Wikileaks release. As documented by the invaluable Glenn Greenwald:

It's been clear from the start that -- despite the valid concern that WikiLeaks should have been more vigilant in redacting the names of innocent Afghan civilians -- the Pentagon (and its media and pundit servants) were drastically exaggerating the harms, as The Associated Press noted on August 17:

The WikiLeaks leak is unrivaled in its scope, but so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation.

Some private analysts, in fact, think the danger has been overstated. "I am underwhelmed by this argument. The Pentagon is hyping," says John Prados, a military and intelligence historian who works for the anti-secrecy National Security Archive. He said in an interview that relatively few names have surfaced and it's not clear whether their present circumstances leave them in jeopardy.

And on August 11, even the DOD was forced to admit to The Washington Post the complete absence of any evidence to support its wild accusations: "'We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents,' [Pentagon spokesman Geoff] Morrell said.

What is interesting in the hit piece is the petulant tone of John Burns. One would have thought the pride of place would have been a mea culpa from Mr Burns explaining why the picture painted by the Wikileaks document was so different than what was conveyed by his reporting. But then, Mr. Burns is a "serious" journalist.

Be afraid, be very afraid

2010-10-22T19:18:00.000-07:00

Muslims wearing garb.

Religious nut of the day

2010-10-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Ovaida Josef, the religious leader of the Shas party which has four cabinet posts in the Netanyahu government again exposed the worst kept secret of all religious extremist - their contempt for the other. Thus spake the good Rabbi according to the Jerusalem Post:

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

According to Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.

“In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,” Yosef said.

People don't like to be bombed

2010-10-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

That the slaughter of loved ones leaves one somewhat upset at those who conducted, or facilitated, the slaughter should not come as a surprise. But perhaps it needs repeating. Chas Freeman has an article up at War In Context that you should really read. Here are some snippets, but do go read the whole thing - and remember, this is a hard boiled realist talking:

The Middle East is a constant reminder that a clear conscience is usually a sign of either a faulty memory or a severe case of arrogant amorality. It is not a badge of innocence. These days, we meticulously tally our own battlefield dead; we do not count the numbers of foreigners who perish at our hands or those of our allies. Yet each death is a tragedy that extinguishes one soul and wounds others. This deserves our grief. If we cannot feel it, we may justly be charged with inhumanity.

All that is required to be hated is to do hateful things. Apparent indifference to the pain and humiliation one has inflicted further outrages its victims, their families, and their friends. As the Golden Rule, common – in one form or another – to all religions, implicitly warns, moral blindness is contagious.
...
War is in fact not the spectator sport that the fans who watch it on television or on big screens in theaters imagine. Nor is it the “cakewalk” that its armchair advocates sometimes suggest it might be. War is traumatic for all its participants. Recent experience suggests that 30 percent of troops develop serious mental health problems that dog them after they leave the battlefield. But what of the peoples soldiers seek to punish or pacify? To understand the hatreds war unleashes and its lasting psychological and political consequences, one has only to translate foreign casualty figures into terms we Americans can relate to. You can do this by imagining that the same percentages of Americans might die or suffer injury as foreigners have. Then think about the impact that level of physical and moral insult would have on us.
...
No one knows how many Iraqis have died as a direct or indirect consequence of the U.S. invasion and the anarchy that followed it. Estimates range between a low of something over 100,000 to a high of well over 1 million. Translated to comparable proportions in the United States, that equates to somewhere between 1 and 13 million dead Americans. Over two-and-a-quarter million Iraqis fled to neighboring countries to escape this bloodbath. An equal number found shelter inside Iraq. Few Iraqis have been able to go back to Iraq or to return to their homes. In our terms, that equals an apparently permanent flight to Canada and Mexico of 24 million Americans, with another 24 million driven into homelessness but, years later, still somewhere inside the country. I think you will agree that, had this kind of thing happened to Americans, religious scruples would not deter many of us from seeking revenge and reprisal against whoever had done it to us.

Sharing

2010-10-15T05:44:00.000-07:00

And for something completely different (h/t Savage):

Let's get stupider

2010-10-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Is the government in Pakistan corrupt. Most certainly. Should they do more to collect taxes from the rich and wealthy in their society. Clearly. Should the US attach strings to their aid in order to get more transparency and accountability. Assuredly. Should they do this with aid for flood relief. Are you out of your frickin mind! But that's exactly what Hillary Clinton is proposing. It seems that when Bill bonded with George, Hillary was learning a thing or two from Barbara.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested European Union leaders should follow the U.S. and withhold further flood-relief funding from Pakistan until Islamabad shows it is doing more to fight corruption and collect tax revenue from its wealthiest citizens.

Holding the flood ravaged refugees hostage for their government's corruption is beyond criminal. It is stupid. Though I doubt this will convince too many of the refugees to stop avoiding taxes, I am sure this statement will be received with gratitude by the Taliban.
Maybe it is something about Yale.

Marty Peretz

2010-09-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

They say that wife beaters remain wife beaters because they can. The same is true of rich white bigots. Ta-Nehisi Coates nails it.

The fact is that Peretz has the social and economic guns to be a bigot, to then be defended by even those who acknowledge his bigotry, and finally be honored at the highest levels of American academia.

And there are the enablers, sometimes known as "journalists":

Howard Kurtz, the media editor of the Washington Post, was among those journalists critical of [Helen] Thomas, suggesting that she should "go home" to Lebanon and that she is a heroine to Hezbollah. Asked why the mainstream media has largely ignored Peretz's views over the years, Kurtz replied: "I'm afraid I just haven't focused on the subject."

Islam and America

2010-09-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

One of the best discussions I have seen about the relationship of the US to the Muslim world and its own Muslim citizens.

An embed with the Taliban

2010-08-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Norwegian journalist Paul Refsdal succeeded in convincing a Taliban commander to let him accompany them. This is his report from Australian TV. (h/t Huffington Post)

Floods in Pakistan

2010-08-18T21:13:00.001-07:00

(h/t Steve Hynd)

Please donate.

Chilly down here

2010-08-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

Two people I never thought I would be quoting

So please, no more talk about those idealistic neoconservatives who are willing to expend blood and treasure so Afghans and Iraqis can live free. People in Basra and Kandahar had better hope that America’s counterinsurgency warriors create a society in which they can practice their religion free of intimidation and insult. Because it’s now clear they can’t do so on the lower tip of the island of Manhattan

And from now on, let’s stop condescending to the French about their anti-headscarf laws. Until a month ago or so, I genuinely believed that no such law could ever pass in the U.S. How naïve. After the right’s despicable performance over the last month, can anyone seriously doubt that if the U.S. had as large, and religiously traditional, a Muslim population as France, that Republicans would be clamoring for Congress to regulate their “Islamofascist” garb? Perhaps they’d merely propose that Muslim women be prohibited from wearing the headscarf within a mile of military bases that house families that have lost loved ones in the “war on terror.” We have to be sensitive, after all.
...
And oh yes, my fellow Jews, who are so thrilled to be locked arm in arm with the heirs of Pat Robertson and Father Coughlin against the Islamic threat. Evidently, it’s never crossed your mind that the religious hatred you have helped unleash could turn once again against us. Of course not, we’re insiders in this society now: Our synagogues grace the toniest of suburbs; our rabbis speak flawless English; we Jews are now effortlessly white. Barely anyone even remembers that folks in Lower Manhattan once considered us alien and dangerous, too.
Peter Beinart
The inclination to go from the particular to the general -- to blame a people for the acts of a few -- is what has always fueled pogroms and race riots. History shows that it is a natural tendency and it will literally run riot if not controlled. It is the solemn obligation of elected leaders to restrain such an urge -- to be moral as well as political leaders. Obama almost pulled that off, but he flinched.

Yes, he couldn't.

Richard Cohen

The floods in Pakistan

2010-08-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

Natural disasters are testing times for governments as Bush found out during Katrina. The current floods in Pakistan have been a test for the Zardari/Gilani government which it seems to have failed miserably. That it would not be able to cope with the natural disaster was a given. The poor infrastructure which is a reflection of the lack of governance made it certain that the government could not respond. Zardari compounded the problem by showing a lack of sensitivity that put Bush in Clinton territory.

President Asif Zardari's trip to France and Britain as the floods raged last week created an image of an indifferent, arrogant leadership, say critics. Already unpopular, Zardari faced protests on Saturday at a rally for his Pakistan Peoples party in Birmingham, with one demonstrator trying to throw a shoe at him.
"Even when governments can't cope, they can at least show empathy. That was missing," said Ayaz Amir, a newspaper columnist and member of parliament for the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (N). "Who was the first person on the scene? The army chief. This has really cost [Zardari] heavily. This image will linger.
"The image of President Zardari visiting his chateau in France, while there was devastating flooding in Pakistan: this will have long-term effects."
... images of what some have dubbed Zardari's "joy ride" have played continuously on Pakistani TV, adding to public anger.

Zardari's party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), with the help of a compliant police force, decided to shoot the messenger.

Transmission of Geo TV was blocked in some parts of the country and copies of The News and the daily Jang burnt in a few areas of Karachi and Sindh on Sunday as the media group gave coverage to the hurling of shoes at President Asif Ali Zardari during his party address in Birmingham.

Many offices of cable operators in Karachi were set ablaze by angry activists of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Newspaper vendors were robbed of copies of The News and the daily Jang upon the direction of PPP leaders, besides, PPP workers were accompanied by police officials in hurling threats at cable operators and hawkers, sources told the media.

While the US is trying to turn the floods into an opportunity to win hearts and minds it is not alone in this endeavor. The groups most active in relief operations are the Islamist groups which are accused of being fronts for jihadi organizations. More rains are forecast.

Kayani marches on

2010-07-25T02:30:00.000-07:00

There are several short term advantages to the extension (more a second term than an extension) granted to General Kayani as the head of Pakistan's armed forces. By all accounts he is a competent officer who is well liked by the US brass. As the US looks for an exit strategy it will be useful to have a known quantity in place in Pakistan which will likely be important to whatever strategy Washington (or more specifically the Pentagon) comes up with. Kayani served as deputy military secretary to Benazir Bhutto and so is familiar with the current president and his entourage. I am sure there is a comfort factor here for Zardari. Kayani also served as the head of the ISI which gives him familiarity with the section of the military most closely involved (to put it mildly) with the various factions in the Taliban. He has also tried to distance the military from the internal politics of Pakistan - though this might just be window dressing.

These short term advantages may be overstated. While Kayani is competent there really is no dearth of competent officers in the Pakistan Army, including those in line to take over Kayani's job. Most of the senior officers of this generation have been trained in the US and would have no difficulty continuing the conversation with the US. While the others in line for the job do not have Kayani's ISI experience they have other experience that would come in handy. For example, the top candidate for the post Khalid Wynne has extensive experience in Baluchistan which is going to be one of the trouble spots in the coming years. He commanded the 41st Infantry Division in Quetta and headed the Southern Command in Quetta. His familiarity with the situation on the ground in Quetta may be as important as Kayani's familiarity with the Taliban. Finally, given the state of the military's reputation in Pakistan it is highly unlikely that anyone would undo Kayani's actions in trying to disentangle the military from the civilian government. As far as involvement of the military in politics the very fact of the extension is evidence of the involvement of the military in politics

Despite any short term advantages there are several long term disadvantages to this extension. There is more than a whiff of US influence in the granting of the extension. This will make any actions Kayani takes to go after the Taliban suspicious to an already conspiracy minded Pakistani public. The extension granted to Kayani brings an end to the military careers of the officers who were up for his job. This has to generate ill will in an army that is already ambivalent about the task it is being asked to do. The suspicion of the public and the softening of support within the military will make Kayani a weaker partner for the US during his second term. Finally, this was a lost opportunity to make a hero in a country that badly needs heros. Everybody knew that an extension (if not a second term) was Kayanis for the asking. Doing a Cincinattus and accepting retirement would have cemented his reputation as an incorruptible "soldier's soldier." One of the most effective actions by a general in recent times was the resignation of the Turkish Chief of General Staff Necip Torumtay in December 1990. His resignation blocked Turkey's participation in the first gulf war and its President Turgut Ozal's ambition to redraw Turkey's boundaries to include Kirkuk and Mosul. By not accepting this extension Kayani might have served his country and his institution, and incidentally US goals, much better.

Best commentary on the firing of the general

2010-06-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

From whoisioz:

On the other hand, I am glad to live in a world where the ongoing slaughter of civilians is a resume-builder but badmouthing the boss is a firing offense.

The Right to Impose Collective Punishment

2010-06-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

Collective punishment has a new name the "right of economic warfare" according to an article from McClatchy:

Israel imposed severe restrictions on Gaza in June 2007, after Hamas won elections and took control of the coastal enclave after winning elections there the previous year, and the government has long said that the aim of the blockade is to stem the flow of weapons to militants in Gaza.
Last week, after Israeli commandos killed nine volunteers on a Turkish-organized Gaza aid flotilla, Israel again said its aim was to stop the flow of terrorist arms into Gaza.

However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.
"A country has the right to decide that it chooses not to engage in economic relations or to give economic assistance to the other party to the conflict, or that it wishes to operate using 'economic warfare,'" the government said.

The US State Department off the record said it didn't have anything to say. After three years of this:

Israel's blockade of Gaza includes a complex and ever-changing list of goods that are allowed in. Items such as cement or metal are barred because they can be used for military purposes, Israeli officials say.
According to figures published by Gisha in coordination with the United Nations, Israel allows in 25 percent of the goods it had permitted into Gaza before the Hamas takeover. In the years prior to the closure, Israel allowed an average of 10,400 trucks to enter Gaza with goods each month. Israel now allows approximately 2,500 trucks a month.
The figures show that Israel also has limited the goods allowed to enter Gaza to 40 types of items, while before June 2007 approximately 4,000 types of goods were listed as entering Gaza.

However, President Obama, eighteen months after taking office, says the situation is "unsustainable." So, everything is fine then.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Israeli Statements

2010-06-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

From Raw Story:

In what could be a serious blow to Israel's narrative on the killing of at least nine humanitarian activists making their way to Gaza through international waters, raw video by an Al Jazeera producer, who was filming during the raid, appears to provide evidence that the IDF opened fire on the flotilla even before boarding it.
Israeli forces assert they came under attack by the pro-Palestine civilian group, and video released by the IDF appears to show one soldier being tossed overboard amid a scuffle with unidentified individuals wielding melee weapons, like clubs and chairs.
However, in raw video captured by an Al Jazeera producer and published to YouTube late Monday, two journalists provide a play-by-play of the harrowing event as pops and cracks echo in the background. Even before the Israeli forces were aboard, one says, they were pelting the boat with tear gas and stun grenades, injuring numerous people.
Then he confirms the first death, saying the individual was killed by "munitions," but not specifying whether it was a bullet or something else. Then he confirms that Israeli forces were boarding the ship.
Another of the reporters featured in the video works for the Iranian network Press TV. "We are being hit by tear gas, stun grenades, we have navy ships on either side, helicopters overhead," he said. "We are being attacked from every single side. This is in international waters, not Israeli waters, not in the 68-mile exclusion zone. We are being attacked in international waters completely illegally."
"The organizers are telling me now, they are raising a white flag -- they are raising a white flag to the Israeli army," the Al Jazeera reporter said. "This is after one person has been killed; a civilian has been killed by munition. That number could be more ... Despite the white flag being raised, despite the white flag being raised, the Israeli army is still shooting, still firing live munitions."

Israel attacks humanitarian flotilla - news from different sources

2010-05-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

Aljazeera:

CNNNPR

Heckuva job Kenny

2010-05-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

Barack Obama, April 2, 2010

"For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill. It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore.
...
Now, from the day he took office as Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar has recognized these problems and he's worked to solve them. Often times he has been slammed by the industry, suggesting that somehow these necessary reforms would impede economic growth. Well, as I just told Ken, we are going to keep on going to do what needs to be done.

Barack Obama, May 14, 2010

Just last year BP—who now likes to say BP stands for “Beyond Petroleum,” not British Petroleum—told the government that an oil spill like the one wreaking havoc in the Gulf was highly unlikely, so they didn’t need to install the remote controlled valves that could prevent an uncontrolled blowout.

Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, was so taken-in by these false safety claims that his agency allowed BP’s offshore drilling plan to be “categorically excluded” from the required environmental impact review. Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said, “Instead of protecting the public interest by conducting environmental reviews, Salazar’s agency rubber stamped BP’s drilling plan, just as it does hundreds of others every year in the Gulf of Mexico.

Cambridgeblog

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling

Marisa Taylor - McClatchy Newspapers

The War is Making You Poor Bill

2010-05-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Alan Grayson keeps it simple (h/t John Ballard) .

Chomsky banned

2010-05-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky and his daughter were denied entry by the Israelis on the Jordan/Israeli border. Here is an interview he gave to Al Jazeera. The interviewer is highly annoying. Chomsky is Chomsky.

Apartheid and Israel

2010-05-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

John Mearsheimer recently gave a talk entitled "The future of Palestine: Righteous Jews versus New Afrikaners." While Mearsheimer believes the two state solution to be the best option he is very pessimistic about the possibility of ever achieving it.

The story I will tell is straightforward. Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.

He goes on to detail his reasons for why he feels the two state solution is a pipe dream. First, there are the "facts on the ground."

The main reason that a two-state solution is no longer a serious option is that most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state, and there is little reason to expect them to have an epiphany on this issue. For starters, there are now about 480,000 settlers in the Occupied Territories and a huge infrastructure of connector and bypass roads, not to mention settlements. Much of that infrastructure and large numbers of those settlers would have to be removed to create a Palestinian state. Many of those settlers however, would fiercely resist any attempt to rollback the settlement enterprise.

Then there are the ideological hurdles.

From the start, Zionism envisioned an Israeli state that controlled all of Mandatory Palestine. There was no place for a Palestinian state in the original Zionist vision of Israel. Even Yitzhak Rabin, who was determined to make the Oslo peace process work, never spoke about creating a Palestinian state. He was merely interested in granting the Palestinians some form of limited autonomy, what he called “an entity which is less than a state.” Plus, he insisted that Israel should maintain control over the Jordan River Valley and that a united Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel. Also remember that in the spring of 1998 when Hillary Clinton was First Lady, she was sharply criticized for saying that “it would be in the long-term interests of peace in the Middle East for there to be a state of Palestine, a functioning modern state on the same footing as other states.”

Then there is the quality of the Israeli leadership

An individual with the stature of David Ben-Gurion or Ariel Sharon – or even Yitzhak Rabin – might be able to stand up to those naysayers and push forward a two-state solution, but there is nobody with that kind of standing in Israeli politics today.

And the weakness of the American leadership

Every American president since 1967 has opposed settlement building in the Occupied Territories. Yet no president has been able to put serious pressure on Israel to stop building settlements, much less dismantle them. Perhaps the best evidence of America’s impotence is what happened in the 1990s during the Oslo peace process. Between 1993 and 2000, Israel confiscated 40,000 acres of Palestinian land, constructed 250 miles of connector and bypass roads, doubled the number of settlers, and built 30 new settlements. President Clinton did hardly anything to halt this expansion. Indeed, the United States continued to give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid each year and to protect it at every turn on the diplomatic front.

One might think that Obama is different from his predecessors, but there is little evidence to support that belief. Consider that during the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama responded to charges that he was “soft” on Israel by pandering to the lobby and repeatedly praising the special relationship. In the month before he took office, he was silent during the Gaza massacre – when Israel was being criticized around the world for its brutal assault on that densely populated enclave.

So, no two state solution. Examining what is left the only viable option is an apartheid state. All very much in the realist mode. But then he seems to leave his realist moorings and predict a "happy ending." He suggest that the American Jewish community will be repulsed by the immorality of an apartheid state.

The bottom line is that Israel will not be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state over the long term, because it will not be able to depend on the American Jewish community to defend its loathsome policies toward the Palestinians. And without that protection, Israel is doomed, because public opinion in the West will turn decisively against Israel, as it turns itself into a full-fledged apartheid state.

Thus, I believe that Greater Israel will eventually become a democratic bi-national state, and the Palestinians will dominate its politics, because they will outnumber the Jews in the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Uri Avnery does not like this "happy ending."

Except for a tiny group of dreamers, who can be gathered in a medium-sized room, there are no Israelis who dream of living in a bi-national state, in which the Arabs constitute the majority.

While he cannot fault Mearsheimer's logic he still feels that apartheid can be reversed and the two state solution is possible. How exactly that will happen Avnery does not know but he figures miracles have happened before. I certainly hope Avnery's miracle comes true because Mearsheimer's belief in the apartheid state causing sufficient revulsion in the diaspora to threaten Israel may be a bit of wishful thinking. From a report from 2006 by Guardian's long time South Africa and Middle East correspondent Chris McGreal (the whole report is well worth reading) :

Several years ago in Johannesburg I met a Jewish woman whose mother and sister were murdered in Auschwitz. After their deaths, she was forced into a gas chamber, but by some miracle that bout of killing was called off. Vera Reitzer survived the extermination camp, married soon after the war and moved to South Africa.
Reitzer joined the apartheid Nationalist party (NP) in the early 1950s, at about the time that the new prime minister, DF Malan, was introducing legislation reminiscent of Hitler's Nuremberg laws against Jews: the population registration act that classified South Africans according to race, legislation that forbade sex and marriage across the colour line and laws barring black people from many jobs.
Reitzer saw no contradiction in surviving the Holocaust only to sign up for a system that was disturbingly reminiscent in its underpinning philosophy, if not in the scale of its crimes, as the one she had outlived. She vigorously defended apartheid as a necessary bulwark against black domination and the communism that engulfed her native Yugoslavia. Reitzer let slip that she thought Africans inferior to other human beings and not entitled to be treated as equals. I asked if Hitler hadn't said the same thing about her as a Jew. She called a halt to the conversation.
Reitzer was unusual among Jewish South Africans in her open enthusiasm for apartheid and for her membership of the NP. But she was an accepted member of the Jewish community in Johannesburg, working for the Holocaust survivors association, while Jews who fought the system were frequently ostracised by their own community.

Let's hope Avnery is right.

Iran acquisition of nuclear weapons imminent!!!

2010-05-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

At antiwar.com Muhammad Sahimi has looked at the warnings that Iran was about to acquire nuclear weapons in the next few years - since 1984. (h/t Eric Martin)

... in April 1984, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that West German intelligence believed that Iran could have a nuclear bomb within two years. Twenty-six years later, that bomb has not been produced.

On June 27, 1984, the late Sen. Alan Cranston was quoted by The Age, a broadsheet daily newspaper published in Melbourne, Australia, claiming that Iran was seven years away from being able to build its own nuclear weapon. ...

On April 12, 1987, David Segal published a piece in the Washington Post titled “Atomic Ayatollahs: Just What the Mideast Needs – an Iranian Bomb,” sounding the alarm about Iran’s forthcoming nuclear weapon.

...

In late 1991, in congressional reports and CIA assessments, the first Bush administration estimated that there was a “high degree of certainty that the government of Iran has acquired all or virtually all of the components required for the construction of two to three nuclear weapons.” In 1992, the CIA changed its mind and predicted that Iran would have nuclear arms by 2000, then pushed that back to 2003.

A February 1992 report by the House of Representatives suggested that Iran would have two or three operational nuclear weapons by February-April 1992.

And, of course, David Albright, the all-world nuclear expert, also weighed in in March 1992. In an article written with Mark Hibbs in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, he claimed that the spotlight had shifted to Iran and its nuclear program.

I almost forgot to mention the sensational reports in Europe in May 1992 by several right-wing European newspapers that Iran already had two nuclear bombs. “Iran has obtained at least two nuclear warheads out of a batch officially listed as ‘missing’ from the newly independent republic of Kazakhstan, formerly part of the Soviet Union. Two of the nuclear weapons were smuggled across the border from Kazakhstan into Iran last year [1991] and are now under the control of Reza Amrollahi, the head of the Iranian Organization for Atomic Energy.” Iran and Kazakhstan do not have common borders, and Amrollahi, who was privy to such an important state secret, was sacked by former president Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and has been living a quiet life in Tehran ever since as a professor.

Things got more interesting in early March 1992 when The Arms Control Reporter reported that by December 1991 Iran had four (not two) nuclear weapons, which it had obtained from the former Soviet Union, including a nuclear artillery shell, two nuclear warheads that could be launched on Scud missiles, and one nuclear weapon that could be delivered by a MiG-27 aircraft.

...On Jan. 23, 1993, Charles Radin of the Boston Globe quoted Gad Yaacobi, then Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, claiming that Iran was devoting $800 million per year to the development of nuclear weapons.

A month later on Feb. 24, new CIA Director James Woolsey (who would later play a leading role in the propaganda for invading Iraq) said that the U.S. was concerned about Iran’s nuclear potential, even though “Iran is still eight to ten years away from being able to produce its own nuclear weapon.”

Then, on March 21, 1993, U.S. News and World Report reported that North Korea and Iran had an agreement to develop nuclear weapons. On April 8, Douglas Jehl of the New York Times reported that the Clinton administration claimed that Iran had paid North Korea $600 million for further development of the Nodong missile to deliver nuclear or chemical warheads.

... Foreign Report claimed on April 22, 1993, that North Korea was supplying Iran with nuclear know-how and enriched uranium. In May 1993, it was reported that U.S. intelligence analysts had alleged that Iran had sought weapons-related nuclear equipment from Ukraine. It did not, of course, matter that both nations denied the allegations.

On June 25, 1993, the AFP reported that the Swiss were major suppliers for Iran’s nuclear weapons program. After Maariv in Israel repeated that claim, even Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin denied it, saying, “They do not know what they are talking about.” But the fabrication factory was producing nonstop. On Sept. 2, 1993, the Intelligence Newsletter reported that the French firm CKD was delivering nuclear materials to Iran. On Oct. 25, 1993, U.S. News and World Report used that great source of expertise for the mainstream media – unidentified intelligence sources – to claim that scientists working in the Soviet Union’s nuclear program in Kazakhstan sold weapons-grade uranium to Iran. And on Dec. 13, 1993, Theresa Hitchens and Brendan McNally of Defense News reported that the CIA “believes that Iran could have nuclear weapons within eight to 10 years.”

...

In January 1995, John Holum, the director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, testified before the Congress that “Iran could have the bomb by 2003.” Defense Secretary William Perry said that “Iran may be less than five years from building an atomic bomb.” ... in The Nonproliferation Review (Vol. 2, 1995), Greg Gerardi reported, “Current U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources estimate Iran will have nuclear weapons in a 5-10 year time frame.” Note how the time frame has become so mobile! David Albright weighed in again with an article titled “An Iranian Bomb?” in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 51 (March-August 1995).

... On April 29, 1996, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that he believed that “in four years, Iran may reach nuclear weapons.”

In 1997 Israel predicted a new date for Iran having a nuclear bomb: 2005

On Oct. 21, 1998, Gen. Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command, said Iran “could have the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons within five years.” ... Steve Rodan claimed on April 9, 1998, in that model of truthfulness, the Jerusalem Post, “Documents obtained by the Jerusalem Post show Iran has four nuclear bombs.”

A CIA assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities publicized on Jan. 17, 2000, said that the Agency could not rule out the possibility that Iran possessed nuclear weapons. The assessment was based on the CIA’s admission that it could not monitor Iran’s nuclear activities with any precision.

Then the George W. Bush administration came to power, and Iran became an even more “imminent” threat. In the heyday of the warmongers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon delivered a classified version of the congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) on Dec. 31, 2001. It listed Iran among the countries that “could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies.”

Demonizing Iran became so fashionable during the Bush years that members of Congress began lying brazenly. A report by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), then chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued on Aug. 23, 2006, stated, “Iran has conducted a clandestine uranium enrichment program for nearly two decades in violation of its IAEA safeguards agreement, and despite its claim to the contrary, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.” It also claimed that “Iran is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade using a 164-machine centrifuge cascade at this facility in Natanz” and “spent fuel from the LWR [light water reactor] that Russia is building for Iran in the city of Bushehr can produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for 30 weapons per year if the fuel rods were diverted and reprocessed.” As I explained elsewhere, all the allegations were lies. They provoked the IAEA to take the unusual step of sending an angry letter to Hoekstra. The letter took “strong exception to the incorrect and misleading assertion” that the IAEA had removed a senior safeguards inspector for “allegedly raising concerns about Iranian deception,” and it branded as “outrageous and dishonest” the report’s suggestion that he was removed for not adhering “to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the truth” about Iran.

...

In a more recent dire prediction, Amos Harel of Ha’aretz reported on July 11, 2007 that “Iran will cross the ‘technological threshold’ enabling it to independently manufacture nuclear weapons within six months to a year and attain nuclear capability as early as mid-2009, according to Israel’s Military Intelligence.”

Right after the Obama administration took over, Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times reported on Feb. 12, 2009, that the Obama administration had made it clear that it believed there was no question that Tehran was seeking the bomb.

And just the other day, Hillary Clinton claimed that Iran has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Apparently, the secretary of state does not know that there is a vast difference – technically and legally – between violating the NPT and being in non-compliance with some provisions of the Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. An NPT violation happens when a member state develops a nuclear bomb, helps another state to do so, or transfers its nuclear technology to a non-member state.

Clinton should hire better lawyers who are loyal to the true national interests of the United States, not rely on pro-Israel “experts” who will settle for nothing short of military attacks on Iran.

The wit and wisdom of Barack Obama

2010-05-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Lifted wholesale from A Tiny Revolution:

It's one thing for heads of state to murder people. That's just part of the job description. It only becomes truly obscene when the people in charge start making jokes about the power of life and death they wield over others.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Barack Obama:

OBAMA: Jonas brothers are here, they're out there somewhere. Sasha annd Malia are huge fans, but boys, don't get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I'm joking?

According to the New America Foundation, Obama has killed somewhere between 109 and 188 civilians with drones during his presidency.

Note also that, according to the Washington Post gossip column, this was one of Obama's "sharpest quips" at the White House correspondents dinner.

Via Charles Davis.

Our war against teenagers

2010-04-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald does have a way of getting to the heart of things.

Speaking of war propaganda, today is a very proud day for the U.S.: the military commission ordered by Eric Holder begins for Omar Khadar, a Canadian-born, Afghanistan-residing detainee encaged at Guantanamo for seven years -- since he was 15 years old -- on "war crimes" and "terrorism" charges that he was involved in a firefight with American military forces who, revealingly enough, were using a former Soviet military base as their outpost. Khadr was wounded in the battle, imprisoned at Bagram, then at Guantanamo, claims he was severely tortured into falsely confessing, and made worldwide news when a video of him weeping, begging for medical help, and crying for his mother during an interrogation was released. Apparently, if the U.S. Army invades a foreign country, anyone who fights against that invading force -- including a 15-year-old boy -- is a "war criminal" and a "Terrorist," even the Worst of The Worst, which is, of course, all that we're currently holding at Guantanamo. Now that's some robust propaganda.

the other

2010-04-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

The first sane comment I have seen about Comedy Central's marketing strategy for South Park (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

When the network that hosts the show starts getting all weird about it, though, that’s a problem for Muslims. Because this large media conglomerate is regularly and repeatedly signalling that, even if they’re willing to stand up to angry Baptists or Jews with hurt feelings, pissed off Muslims are so scary and weird and “other” that they have to be handled with kid gloves. I know plenty of fucked-up Christians who I’m sure have sent angry letters and phone calls to Comedy Central about South Park.

So, what Comedy Central is saying is that some death-threaty, angry, fundamentalist kill-joys, if they’re Christian, obviously don’t reflect the opinions of all Christians or warrant changing programming to accommodate. But some death-threaty, angry, fundamentalist kill-joys, if they’re Muslim, will be treated as if they are the legitimate authority on their religion and Comedy Central will respond in fear to them.

And fear is just the submissive expression of hostility.

I want someone on Capitol Hill to give a shit.

2010-04-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

So says Dan Froomkin wondering whether any of "our" elected representatives cares about what appears in the wikileaks video.

So far (and I've done a bit of calling around) I haven't heard any member of Congress express any intention of holding an oversight hearing into the matter -- or even asking any questions at all.

They seem utterly uncurious about how exactly it was OK for a bloodthirsty-sounding helicopter crewman to open fire on a group of (apparently) armed men when all they were doing was milling around on a street corner -- not to mention how it was OK to target the Good Samaritan van driver who pulled over to help one of the injured men. (He was killed; his two small children were wounded.)
Even more than that, to be perfectly honest, I want someone on Capitol Hill to give a shit about the gruesome cover-up by U.S. forces in Afghanistan after they massacred five innocent civilians, including three women, two of whom were pregnant -- just this past February. Just not on video (as far as we know).

In case you missed it, the very same morning the WikiLeaks video was released, the New York Times confirmed reports by heroic Times of London correspondent Jerome Starkey that American Special Operations soldiers actually dug their bullets out of the bodies of the women as part of a cover-up. NATO headquarters, led by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then backed them up and repeatedly tried to discredit Starkey and his story.

Is that standard operating procedure? Again, I haven't heard a peep of interest from the Hill -- despite the fact that Starkey himself has argued that it was not an isolated incident, and that U.S. and NATO forces are rarely held to account for the atrocities they commit.

Where's the outrage? Where's the responsibility? Where's the oversight? Hell, where's the basic curiosity? Has anyone on the Hill even asked any questions of the Pentagon or the White House? Hey, President Obama, are you OK with this?

Does your member of Congress give a shit?

He has a suggestion

Call them and let me know what you find out.

Wikileaks followup

2010-04-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

AlJazeera has an analysis of the Wikileaks video with Julian Assange and Ivan Eland. Eland is basically representing the US military point of view (h/t Pulse):

A thousand words...

2010-04-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

A Jewish settler tosses wine at a Palestinian woman on Shuhada Street in Hebron, the West Bank. (h/t War in Context)

The cancer of unemployment

2010-04-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

This is a visualization of the change in unemployment rates over the period of a year developed by LaToya Egwuekwe, a graduate student and member of the Machinists Union. It's scary. (h/t Paul Rosenberg)

Yes, but ...

2010-04-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

Fafblog puts the Wikileaks video in context

Now, is this video disturbing? Of course. Were atrocities committed, innocents slaughtered, corpses desecrated and children maimed? Absolutely. But was it all done according to proper procedure? Ah, now, that's the question. We should all certainly be willing to support a full and complete investigation into the possibility of an official recommendation for preliminary motions toward an investigation, looking into the matter of whether or not the people here were properly murdered in triplicate, signed twice on the goldenrod form, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law. And we shouldn't rest until any guilty parties have been found, and strongly-worded disciplinary Post-Its firmly applied to their personnel files.

Apart from that, I don't think we have to spend much time thinking about this sort of thing - this is an isolated incident, just like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this - and one has to accept a certain amount of rape, torture and murder with one's military. After all, if the military wasn't free to rape and torture people, then it certainly wouldn't be free to murder them; and if the military wasn't free to murder people, then it wouldn't be free to slaughter them en masse; and if the military wasn't free to slaughter people en masse, then what would we even have a military for?

Murder in our name

2010-04-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

Wikileaks has released this video from a Blackhawk helicopter showing one example of the slaughter of Iraqis in 2007. The US had claimed that the helicopters reacted to an active firefight. What is totally nauseating is the murder of the neighbors who come to help the wounded. Watch.

Ellen Lubell - a decent human being

2010-03-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

Faced with all the daily crap it is sometimes easy to forget that the world is full of very decent human beings. The Talking Dog interviewed Ellen Lubell, the lawyer for one of the Guantanamo detainees (h/t Pulse). Ms Lubell represents Abdul Aziz Naji, an Algerian National.

Ellen Lubell: Our client, Abdul Aziz Naji, is from Algeria. His family is there and we’ve spoken with them a number of times. Aziz is 34 and he has been imprisoned at Guantanamo for nearly eight years. He’s very likeable. He is an observant Muslim. Despite having attended school only through the sixth grade, he is bright, insightful, and has an excellent memory. He readily expresses his feelings and views on issues. He is extremely appreciative of our efforts on his case and lets us know this frequently. He loves children and very much wants go get married and have his own.

When Aziz was living in Algeria, around the time he was 17 or 18, he and his brother were attacked by a group of terrorists. After that, his brother left the country and so did Aziz, after completing his required military service. He went first to Mecca on a pilgrimage, and then traveled to Pakistan to perform "zakat"- charitable work – as is required of observant Muslims. Aziz worked for a charitable organization in the mountains of Kashmir for only a few months when he accidently stepped on one of the many landmines still buried left in this war-torn region. The explosion blew off the lower half of his right leg. He was taken to a hospital in Lahore, where he was treated, and over the course of a year received rehabilitation and a prosthetic leg. He decided then that he would try to find a wife. He was directed by friends to another Algerian man living in Peshawar, who was known to be helpful in arranging marriages. Aziz visited the man and while he was there, the man’s house was raided by the Pakistani police. The raid may have been the result of the bounties that were offered by the US at the time to local people if they identified possible “terrorists” among them. The Pakistanis interrogated Aziz, concluded that he had done nothing wrong, and told him they would release him. Instead, they turned him over to the Americans. Aziz was taken to the US prison at Bagram, Afghanistan, where he was tortured, and then on to Guantanamo.
When we took Aziz’s case, we were provided a file from the U.S. Department of Defense that included a list of allegations against him, with alleged “confessions.” None of the allegations or confessions was backed by any credible evidence. Ultimately, our view that the U.S. had no case against Aziz was validated by the Obama Administration, which cleared him in June 2009.

Though cleared he is still in Guantanamo. Lubell provides a summary of the various twists and turns of the case in the interview. The interview is well worth reading. What especially touched me was her response to the question about how she got involved in the case.

The Talking Dog: How did you first get involved in Guantanamo representation, and how has it effected your legal practice or your life in general?
Ellen Lubell: In 2006, after the media reported that three of the detainees had committed suicide, my partner Doris and I decided as a matter of conscience that we had to do something. Neither of us is a constitutional lawyer or even a litigator, but we were encouraged by colleagues at WilmerHale, who had already gotten involved in representing a group of detainees, to contact CCR and inquire about being assigned a client. We did so, and CCR explained that although representing a detainee would be very expensive (aside from our time), there would be a great deal of support available to us from our fellow attorneys. We decided to forge ahead and were assigned a client by CCR.

I’ve been changed in many ways by the experience. I’ve been privileged to work with some of the most amazing lawyers in the country. I’ve had to become conversant with areas of law that are entirely new for me – constitutional law, federal court procedure, international law, and asylum law. I no longer keep my political opinions to myself. I no longer look at problems around me and think someone else will fix them. I’ve become terribly skeptical of everything I read in the newspaper. Most importantly, I’ve been changed by getting to know our client and his family. While it’s easy to see all the ways the life of a Jewish woman from Newton with a law degree differs from that of a young Muslim man from Algeria with only a primary school education, we’ve discovered so many things we have in common. We’ve been able to enjoy each other’s company, disagree and laugh, and trust each other. Despite the struggle, this is something I will value forever.

Brightens your day to know people like her exist. The Talking Dog has interviews with many people dealing with the legal aspects on The War Against Terror.

Suicide Terrorism and Lung Cancer

2010-03-18T12:32:00.001-07:00

Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and author of "Dying to Win - The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" gave a talk on the subject and its implications for the US occupation of Afghanistan. He repeats his basic thesis that the central objective of suicide terrorism is to force occupying armies to withdraw from the territories they occupy and backs it up with lots and lots of data. This motivation is as secular as you can get - no 72 virgins involved. He points out that prior to the US invasion of Iraq the biggest group of suicide attacks were conducted by the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist/Hindu group, and even among Muslim groups 30% of the attacks were carried out by secular groups such as the PKK. His problem with people associating suicide terrorism with religion - mostly Islam - is that he feels that these misperceptions are "encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen our situation". One may not agree with all he says but much of what he says is very instructive.

Interesting

2010-02-24T17:48:00.000-08:00

Jundullah (Soldiers of God) has long been a thorn in the side of the Iranians and a continuing source of tension between Pakistan and Iran. The most recent was the suicide attack on October 18th of last year in Pishin which resulted in the death of several top officers of the revolutionary guards. The Iranians blamed the US and Pakistan with some justification.

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
...
Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context.

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

And

Besides condemning alleged Western support for Jundullah, the Iranian government sharply criticized Pakistan, from whose territory the bombers were said to have entered Iran, and demanded that Islamabad act against the group.

While any suggestion of a U.S. hand in Sunday's attack may be far-fetched, Iran is basing its accusation on the covert program begun by the Bush Administration during its second term in office that allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to efforts at destabilizing the regime from inside Iran. And while President Obama came into office promising a new era of engagment with Iran, it's not clear whether the covert program was ever suspended. Former Bush National Security Council officials Flynt Leverett and Hilary Mann Leverett wrote recently in the New York Times of their conversations with Iranian leaders, saying "President Obama has had several opportunities to send ... signals [of good intent] to Tehran — such as ending Bush-era covert programs against Iran — but has punted." Iran has long suspected that groups such as Jundullah are supported as part of the covert campaign, and in 2007, ABC News alleged that Jundullah had secretly received advice and encouragement from U.S. intelligence officials.

The founder of Jundullah Abdulmalik Rigi (or more fancifully Emir Abdulmalik Baloch) who has personally claimed to have "executed" Iranians. It is reasonable to assume that the Pakistan Army intelligence service, the ISI has a hand in maintaining and funding the Jundullah. But, the ISI seems to have turned on its asset. The Iranians reported that Rigi was captured when the plane carrying him to Dubai was forced to land in Iran. Asia Times Online is reporting that

Baloch tribes in the Taftan area of Balochistan in Pakistan say Rigi was arrested inside Pakistan and then handed over to the Iranians. All that Iranian state television showed was a handcuffed Rigi being escorted by four masked commandos off a small aircraft.

If this is indeed true and the ISI is turning on its assets expect the assets to hit back. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a fanatical anti-Shiite group, which is closely linked with Jundullah has previously carried out some pretty brutal attacks in Pakistan. It might decide to do more of the same. The fact that ISI is turning on its assets might also cause some discomfort to other terrorist organizations previously supported by the ISI. Altogether an explosive situation.

Why Marjah

2010-02-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

So why did the US decide to invade Marjah? There is the somewhat Panglossian view from Stratfor:

Marjah is perhaps the quintessential example of a good location from which to base. It is in a region sympathetic to the Taliban; Helmand province is part of the Taliban’s heartland. Marjah is very close to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, the religious center of the local brand of Islam, the birthplace of the Taliban, and due to the presence of American forces, an excellent target. Helmand alone produces more heroin than any country on the planet, and Marjah is at the center of that trade. By some estimates, this center alone supplies the Taliban with a monthly income of $200,000. And it is defensible: The farmland is crisscrossed with irrigation canals and dotted with mud-brick compounds — and, given time to prepare, a veritable plague of IEDs.

Simply put, regardless of the Taliban’s strategic or tactical goals, Marjah is a critical node in their operations.

And therefore, argue the authors, it makes perfect sense that Marjah should be the target. But if Marjah is important because it is close to Kandahar, "the birthplace of the Taliban," then why not attack Kandahar asks Steve Coll:

Routing the Taliban from Marja, where they had established a vicious and increasingly unchallenged shadow government, was undoubtedly necessary. I’m no military strategist, but it remains unclear to me why surging U.S. forces continue to invest their efforts and their numbers so heavily in Helmand. The axis of Taliban power, guerrilla infiltration, and money flows in southern Afghanistan lies somewhat to the East, along the routes between Kandahar and the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Karachi, which serve as sanctuaries for senior Taliban leadership. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and a historical seat of power. From their birth in 1994, the Taliban have relied upon their ability to move freely between Kandahar, Baluchistan and Karachi.

Peter Bergen is also somewhat puzzled. Though like most other western commentators he tries to find a reason. Gareth Porter figures it is all a propaganda operation where the target is the US public. Have shown their strength and steely resolve in six months the Obama administration can start negotiating with the the Taliban from a "position of strength.

More at The Real News

The US Military claims the Marjah offensive as the first step in their counter insurgency plan. The Taliban are to be driven out rapidly followed by the delivery of a "government in a box" which will provide great governance to the Afghans - flower strewn road to follow. Steve Hynd at Newshoggers has been effectively debunking the "COINdinista" myth for a while - the Marjah edition is here. If this is truly counter insurgency it is not being done very well. Naming an operation against a Pashtun region with a Dari word - Moshtarak (together) - probably did not help in the hearts and minds department. And the folks that the US military is together with are themselves mainly Tajiks - again not a great recommendation to the rural Pashtuns.

The Taliban have their own view of why Marjah.

While both government and opposition papers denied that Marjah and Nade Ali had been chosen for clear, military and strategic reasons, the Taliban themselves had no such doubts. Judging by an interview with the Taliban commander in charge of Marjah, the movement regards the operation as part of an international imperialist conspiracy which renders Marjah and Nade Ali of special military and strategic importance. The interview with Mullah Abdul Rezaq Akhund, the Taliban commander in Marjah, was conducted in Pashto and posted on Cheragh Daily website.
The interview shows that seen through the Taliban's conspiracy prism, Helmand's geographic location gives the province strategic importance. In the interview, Akhund listed four primary reasons which, according to the Taliban, explain why Helmand is of great geo-strategic importance to Nato. The Taliban commander alleged that the US and the UK intend to set up surveillance centres along the border to collect Iranian military and intelligence data. Akhund further alleged that since Helmand is also close to Gwadar, a Pakistani port which is of economic significance to China, controlling Helmand allows Washington to curb the influence of its main economic rival in the region.

Giving Arbabzadeh the last word.

According to anecdotal evidence, Mullah Akhund's views reflect those of a majority in Afghanistan. The conspiracy theory comes in variations but common to all versions is a denial of the fact that the violence has local roots and that the problem is self-created and self-perpetuated. It is this denial that is moshtarak, or shared, by all parties, from the government to the opposition and the Taliban.

All hail Fafnir

2010-02-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Fafblog gets to the heart of the matter:

So a coupla Israeli guys are hangin around in Dubai, havin a good time, checkin out the place, seein the sights, that building that looks like a boat, that island that's shaped like a bigger island, get a few drinks, catch a show, kill a Palestinian, maybe grab a coupla souvenirs for the kids an hit the road. Oh wait! Wait a second! Something went wrong there! Something happened there that was very, very wrong! Because in the course of doing those things, those people went and forged some British passports.

Well now it's one thing to kill Palestinians abroad and thousands more next door while starving whoever manages to survive and demolishing their homes, but sullying the honour and dignity of Her Britannic Majesty's Royal Passport? Well sir, that is just not cricket. That sounds to me like one a those less enjoyable English pastimes like badminton or stumpgouger or dead arabball.

Now it's pretty obvious to me that Britain and Israel have a lotta stuff to work out, a lotta trust issues. But if we sit down, talk it over, work it out, I think we can save this relationship. Maybe over a friendly game of dead arabball.

Tribalism today

2010-02-19T06:43:00.000-08:00

There are two interesting posts - in a way related - by Greenwald and Sullivan:
Greenwald gives us the skinny on the definition of a terrorist.
Sullivan gives us a an understanding of the Catholic Bishops priorities when it comes to the sanctity of life.

Religious democracy - a bloody oxymoron

2010-02-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

The idea of a religious democracy in any environment where there is even a minimal amount of religious diversity - including diversity within a particular faith - is being proven again and again to be a fantasy. Whether it be the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Jewish Democracy in the Middle East, all protestations of democracy come to naught when faced with the exclusionary nature of religious governance. Not that religions per se have to be exclusionary, but the moment decisions on how society should be run begins to be based on religious interpretations, the results are necessarily exclusionary. Despite being a Turcophile I have had some reservations about Ataturk's visceral hostility to religion. But perhaps he had his reasons. Lawrence of Cyberia, back after a long absence has her own take on Israel:

Israel's dilemma is that it wants to be viewed as a modern, humane, democratic state; but modern democracy requires equality. And if everyone under Israeli rule - Jewish, Muslim, Christian or otherwise - is an equal human being, then that is the end of the "Jewish state" in Palestine. It is Israel's own attachment to creating a state in historic Palestine where democratic rights are reserved in their fulness to only one of the peoples who live there that requires Palestinian human rights to be trodden on. To stop treading on Palestinian human rights - to stop routinely killing, exiling, disenfranchising and dispossessing Palestinians - is to give up the very policies that are necessary to build a Jewish state in a place where most people are not Jewish. To recognize that the annihilation of one's neighbors is a central element in one's own national ideology is a difficult and painful thing to do. It is much easier to invent an alternate reality, in which the denial of any rights to Palestinians is the result of an essential defect in their own collective nature.

The argument is not that Judaism or Islam or Christianity is incompatible with democracy. But when the state endorses a particular religion it commits itself to follow the tenets of that religion. And as any dynamic religion has to be capable of multiple interpretations and as the state will always try to maximize its control, it inevitably drifts towards more and more authoritarian interpretations of the religion. Consider the Islamic Republic of Iran in which the legitimacy of the "religious" government is viewed with suspicion by much of the religious orthodoxy. Jonathon Lyons explains:

In traditional Shi’ite thought, legitimate political authority may be exercised only by the line of the Holy Imams, the last of whom went into hiding to escape the agents of the rival Sunni caliphs and has not been heard from since 941. The return of the Hidden Imam, which will usher in an era of perfect peace and justice on earth, is eagerly awaited by all believers. Until then, all political power is seen as corrupt and corrupting by its very nature, and as such it must be avoided whenever possible.

Historically, this has served the Shi’ite clergy well, forging a close bond with the people, as intercessors with the state authorities at times of acute crisis, a privileged and influential position only rarely achieved by their Sunni counterparts. Yet, it stands in direct opposition to Ayatollah Khomeini’s radical religious notion of direct clerical rule and has been the source of underlying tensions within the clerical class for three decades. The dirty little secret of the Islamic Republic is the fact that it is seen as illegitimate by huge swathes of the traditional Shi’ite clergy.

The Shia clergy could afford their "populist" stance only as long as they were not part of the state. As part of the state they are subject to the need of the state to exert control - which has meant that they have become captive to the instruments of state used to exert control - the Revolutionary Guard and its Basiji militia. Religious democracy is an idea whose time has passed.

Neal Conan - on the job

2010-02-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

The Iraq war would have been more difficult had it not been for the help of the "liberal" media in preparing the way to war. A major player in this effort was NPR who turned the sickening crime of invasion into something Serious People needed to Seriously consider. Fawning interviews of liberal hawks by liberal icon Terri Gross helped blur the lines as did the "news" arm of NPR. Neal Conan, host of Talk of the Nation, was one who was especially good at staying on message. Today he was again on message helping to prepare the ground for a "strong response" to Iran. Talking to Mike Shuster about Iran's nuclear program Conan asks "what of Iran's neighbors.."(10:08 into the segment) Shuster replies:

... they always get nervous when there seems to be moments when there is greater tension between Iran and the United States because they fear they could be caught in the middle of any kind of shooting war if it were to break out ... they do not want to see anything like serious conflict break out

Clearly, Iran is not about to attack the US, so what the "neighbors" are worried about is aggression coming from the US. It is the US that arouses fear, not Iran. However, this does not conform with the message, so Conan simply reiterates his own contention of the neighbors being worried about Iran, not the US, and continues. Says Conan

..and the Neighbors are concerned not just about what goes on inside Iran but also inside Iraq vis a vis Iran

This might seem trivial but it was the use of continuous propaganda of this sort that helped pave the way to the war in Iraq. And NPR is relentless in its job of supporting the American imperial enterprise.

If you have previously supported NPR consider diverting that support to something like Free Speech TV

The Uriah Heep Presidency

2010-02-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

Tariq Ali has a summary of some of the current administrations accomplishments in killing. A summary of the summary is provided by the image accompanying the piece.

Interrogation for information or pain

2010-02-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

How to stop the flow of information.

After his conviction in April 2001, Ressam cooperated with federal authorities in hopes of winning a shorter prison sentence. He became a key source of information on the operation of al-Qaida in Western Europe and North America after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, providing information that led to the prosecution of some of the terrorist organization's top leaders.

But two years later he stopped cooperating. A court-appointed psychiatrist found that he was suffering from a mental breakdown after years in solitary confinement and repeated interrogations. When he was sentenced in December 2008, Ressam recanted everything he'd ever said as a government informant.

and how to interrogate in order to actually get information.

In the days following the failed bombing, a pair of FBI agents flew to Nigeria and persuaded Abdulmutallab's family to help them. When the agents returned to the U.S., Abdulmutallab's family came, too, according to a senior administration official briefed on the case. The family persuaded Abdulmutallab to work with the FBI, believing he would be treated fairly in U.S. courts, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
FBI officials continue to question Abdulmutallab, working in collaboration with CIA and other intelligence authorities, the official said. ... A law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said Abdulmutallab has provided information about his contacts in Yemen, where an al-Qaida branch has claimed responsibility for the failed attack.

Though Jack Bauer would probably not approve.

Torture and murder in the American Empire

2010-01-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

Steve Hynd links to the story of the murder of a nine year old by the Blackwater thugs and asks

please read the whole thing slowly and carefully, then ask yourself what the fuck is going on with America.

While you're at it also read this piece by Anand Gopal entitled Obama's Secret Prisons.

Sometime in the last few years, Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan’s rugged heartland began to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of the night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In the secretive U.S. detentions process, suspects are usually nabbed in the darkness and then sent to one of a number of detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.

What follows are story after story of horrific abuse and a bureaucratic machinery from hell

Night raids are only the first step in the American detention process in Afghanistan. Suspects are usually sent to one among a series of prisons on U.S. military bases around the country. There are officially nine such jails, called Field Detention Sites in military parlance. They are small holding areas, often just a clutch of cells divided by plywood, and are mainly used for prisoner interrogation.

One of those interrogated was a former police officer Noor Agha Sher Khan

The interrogators blindfolded him, taped his mouth shut, and chained him to the ceiling, he alleges. Occasionally they unleashed a dog, which repeatedly bit him. At one point, they removed the blindfold and forced him to kneel on a long wooden bar. “They tied my hands to a pulley [above] and pushed me back and forth as the bar rolled across my shins. I screamed and screamed.” They then pushed him to the ground and forced him to swallow 12 bottles worth of water. “Two people held my mouth open and they poured water down my throat until my stomach was full and I became unconscious. It was as if someone had inflated me.” he says. After he was roused from his torpor, he vomited the water uncontrollably.

This continued for a number of days; sometimes he was hung upside down from the ceiling, and other times blindfolded for extended periods. Eventually, he was sent on to Bagram where the torture ceased. Four months later, he was quietly released, with a letter of apology from U.S. authorities for wrongfully imprisoning him.

...

Some of those taken to the Field Detention Sites never make it to Bagram, but instead are simply released after authorities deem them to be innocuous. Even then, some allege abuse. Such was the case with Hajji Ehsanullah, snatched one winter night in 2008 from his home in the southern province of Zabul. He was taken to a detention site in Khost Province, some 200 miles away. He returned home 13 days later, his skin scarred by dog bites and with memory difficulties that, according to his doctor, resulted from a blow to the head. U.S. forces had dropped him off at a gas station in Khost after three days of interrogation. It took him ten more days to find his way home.

And some don't survive the initial encounter

In the dust-swept province of Khost one day this past December, U.S. forces launched a night raid on the village of Motai, killing six people and capturing nine, according to nearly a dozen local government authorities and witnesses. Two days later, the bodies of two of those detained—plastic cuffs binding their hands—were found more than a mile from the largest U.S. base in the area.

And then there is Bagram where the Hippocratic oath is considered a tool of "asymmetrical warfare"

The U.S. Special Forces also run a second, secret prison somewhere on Bagram Air Base that the Red Cross still does not have access to. Used primarily for interrogations, it is so feared by prisoners that they have dubbed it the “Black Jail.”

One day two years ago, U.S. forces came to get Noor Muhammad, outside of the town of Kajaki in the southern province of Helmand. Muhammad, a physician, was running a clinic that served all comers—including the Taliban. The soldiers raided his clinic and his home, killing five people (including two patients) and detaining both his father and him. The next day, villagers found the handcuffed corpse of Muhammad’s father, apparently dead from a gunshot.

The soldiers took Muhammad to the Black Jail. “It was a tiny, narrow corridor, with lots of cells on both sides and a big steel gate and bright lights. We didn’t know when it was night and when it was day.” He was held in a concrete, windowless room, in complete solitary confinement. Soldiers regularly dragged him by his neck, and refused him food and water. They accused him of providing medical care to the insurgents, to which he replied, “I am a doctor. It’s my duty to provide care to every human being who comes to my clinic, whether they are Taliban or from the government.”

Eventually, Muhammad was released, but he has since closed his clinic and left his home village. “I am scared of the Americans and the Taliban,” he says. “I’m happy my father is dead, so he doesn’t have to experience this hell.”

In the game of who is the more vicious, the Taliban or us, we seem to be winning.

It has become a predictable pattern: Taliban forces ambush American convoys as they pass through the village, and then retreat into the thick fruit orchards that cover the area. The Americans then return at night to pick up suspects. In the last two years, 16 people have been taken and 10 killed in night raids in this single village of about 300, according to villagers. In the same period, they say, the insurgents killed one local and did not take anyone hostage.

Even the liberal New Republic

2010-01-28T19:32:00.000-08:00

The Moor Next Door, who should be daily required reading, rips Jonathan Chait and Marty Peretz a new one. The whole post is worth reading. He ends with a question.

The question remains: why can Marty Peretz, in all his bigotry and foolishness, sit at the helm of the so-called flagship publication of the American left? How can he spend his days writing bitterly ignorant blog posts while American liberals look on without raising any fuss? That sounds like it turns on Peretz his own demand that Muslims, regardless of profession, place, age or whether they live in a free state or a dictatorship, protest every bombing or beheading in Pakistan or some other warzone (because they protested cartoons); but it does not. Liberal bloggers do take him on; liberal writers do too. And they do it quite well. They accuse him of racism or of being a neoconservative in the guise of a liberal. The latter charge is of no particular concern here, but one must draw the conclusion that Peretz gets away with his racism because he can.

He can write five times a day on why the President must call terrorist acts acts of “Muslim terrorism” and why Americans should not think that the sliver of Muslims engaged in violent radicalism represent the essential Islamic tradition because he is the editor-in-chief and as such has underlings to look the other way and to defend him if need be. He can make warnings about minor matters in the vein of Sir Anthony Eden crying out about Nasser because a good many are willing to let him rant so long as they can sit in another room, that quirky old man. He has the ear of Al Gore and other powerful liberals. “But how can that be?” the little American Ait-Brownskin asks. “Because the possibilities of conversation are always broader than the inconvinent truth of Martin Peretz’s bigotry,” replies Baba Ait-Brownskin.

Nope, nothing to see, but maybe we should

2010-01-22T19:46:00.000-08:00

Another week and still no coverage in the corporate media about the death by ~~torture~~ interrogation of three human beings. Dahlia Lithwick of Slate tries to understand why.

Some torture stories are just too horrible to contemplate, while others are too complicated to understand. But Scott Horton's devastating new exposé of the possible murders of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006 is neither: It's simply too terrible to allow to be true. Which is why it has been mostly ignored this week in the mainstream American media and paid little attention by the usual crew of torture apologists on the right. The fact that three Guantanamo prisoners—none of whom had any links to terrorism and two of whom had already been cleared for release—may have been killed there and the deaths covered up, should be front-page news. That brand-new evidence of this possible atrocity from military guards was given only the most cursory investigation by the Obama administration should warrant some kind of blowback. But changing what we allow ourselves to believe about torture would change the way we have reconciled ourselves to torture. Nobody in this country is prepared to do that. So we have opted to ignore it.

and why it shouldn't

As Richard Schragger wrote in Slate in 2006:
Military lawyers are not only concerned about how the enemy will treat our troops. They are also concerned about how our troops will treat the enemy—and not just because that treatment might be morally offensive and/or strategically unwise. As one of my colleagues—himself a JAG officer—put it, the Geneva Conventions are so honored by military lawyers because they protect our own troops' humanity. The conventions prevent higher-ups from ordering subordinates to engage in repugnant acts, and they offer soldiers on the ground some basis for differentiating legal acts of killing and destruction from criminal acts of killing and destruction.
I think about this every time I hear someone—usually on a comment thread—claim that if he had just 15 minutes, KSM, and a lobster fork, he'd get himself a confession. We don't want that guy in the military, and frankly, neither does the military. Our soldiers object to torture not because they want to pamper terrorists but because they want to protect us from our own worst selves. The third big lie the media have perpetrated on the American public as we cheerfully debate the "ticking time bomb" scenario and the possible efficacy of torture is that our soldiers remain unaffected when asked to participate in such abuse, or to lie about it after the fact.
I have no reason to doubt the investigative work of Horton or Denbeaux's team and every reason to believe the Obama administration's investigation of Hickman's story was less than exhaustive. But above and beyond the implausible narrative constructed by NCIS and the bizarre throat autopsies on the deceased, four military guards at Guantanamo felt compelled to come forward and report their concerns about prisoner abuse, and nobody seems to think it warrants any discussion. Members of the military deserve our honor and respect. And one of the ways we can show that is by paying attention when soldiers raise questions about the honor of the military. Even if we've learned to sleep at night despite the fact we have tortured, we should spare one toss or turn for those soldiers who cannot.

Still nothing to see

2010-01-20T19:31:00.000-08:00

From Daniel Luban at LobeLog

It is not terribly surprising that the leading apologists for the Bush-Cheney torture regime — the likes of Marc Thiessen, Thomas Joscelyn, and so on — have refused to respond to Horton’s piece. What is more surprising, however, is that the major U.S. papers have paid little attention as well. After remaining silent all day, the New York Times and Washington Post finally posted an AP wire story on the revelations this evening, but it is nowhere to be found on their main pages. The Los Angeles Times still appears to have nothing whatsoever on the story.

By contrast, the major British papers (with the exception of Rupert Murdoch’s Times) have all followed up on Horton’s piece. It is by now a depressingly familiar pattern that the British media exhibit far more interest in the abuses of the Bush/Blair years than their American counterparts. Still, one would think that a possible triple homicide of detainees in U.S. custody, and the subsequent cover-up by both the Bush and Obama administrations, would merit some U.S. news coverage — even given the almost exclusive focus on Haiti and Massachusetts at the moment.

Nothing to see here

2010-01-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

The reaction of the corporate media, such as the New York Times, to Scott Horton's story of the possible death by torture of prisoners at Guantanamo has been - silence. The only corporate news show which has reported on the Horton expose is Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Today, Horton covers the continuing coverup - also known as the official response.

Asymmetrical Warfare and Murder

2010-01-18T10:59:00.000-08:00

Scott Horton has an investigative piece following up on the Seton Hall report which exposed the apparent murder of three prisoners at Guantanamo. The death of these prisoners, the youngest of whom was 17 at the time of his arrest, were labeled as suicides by the US government. Rear Admiral Harry Harris carried away it seems by his own creativity declared these "suicides" to be an act of asymmetrical warfare. The government in the form of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service "investigated" the deaths and came up with a report that is so totally ludicrous that it defies belief.

According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

According to Horton's report it seems the three died as a result of extensive torture. After the Seton Hall report was published Seargent Joe Hickman who was selected “NCO of the Quarter” and was given a commendation medal for his service at Guantanamo came forward with report of a torture center in Guantanamo. In particular he had witnessed what was the beginnings of the coverup on the night the three men had been killed. He had been ordered not to talk about what he saw but felt that "silence was just wrong." With lawyers from the Seton Hall team he met with the Justice department and recounted what he knew. However, it seems that the Justice department has been involved in the coverup from the very beginning. Horton names names and calls out individuals. His report is well worth reading - if for nothing else than understanding the crimes that are being committed in our names.

History of Muslims and Islamic thought

2010-01-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

There is an interesting series on early Muslim history at 3quarksdaily by Namit Arora. I am posting the links here so I don't lose them. The series seems to be well worth reading if you are interested in a brief history of early Muslims and the development of Islamic thought.
1. Part 1: The rise of Islam.
2. Part 2: The golden age.
3. Part 3: The path of reason.
4. Part 4: The mystic tide.
5. Part 5: Epilogue

Lap Bomber stories

2009-12-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

There are a number of stories from passengers about the Nigerian kid who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253. There is this from Kurt Haskell of Newport Michigan:

I was on this flight today and am thankful to be alive. My wife and I were returning from an African safari and had this connecting flight through Amsterdam. I sat in row 27, which was 7 rows behind the terrorist. I got to see the whole thing take place and it was very scary. Thanks to a few quick acting people I am still alive today.
For those of you talking about airline security in this thread, I was next to the terrorist when he checked in at the Amsterdam airport early on Christmas. My wife and I were playing cards directly in front of the check in counter. This is what I saw (and I relayed this to the FBI when we were held in customs):

An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said "This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport." The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn't look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said "you can't board without a passport". The Indian man then replied, "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time". I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said "You will have to talk to my manager", and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn't on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager.

FBI also arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us "You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. Read between the lines. Some of you saw what just happened."(The arrest of the other Indian man). I am not sure why this hasn't made it into any news story, but I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested after his search.

The Dutch are investigating.
Then there is this from Patricia Keepman from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.

They were sitting about 20 rows behind Abdulmutallab, in a center aisle with her husband and daughter a row ahead of her and their two new adopted children, a six-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy.
Her daughter said that ahead of them was a man who videotaped the entire flight, including the attempted detonation.

"He sat up and videotaped the entire thing, very calmly," said Patricia. "We do know that the FBI is looking for him intensely. Since then, we've heard nothing about it."

Gaza - a year later

2009-12-27T18:24:00.000-08:00

It has been a year. From B'tselem:

Between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, the Israeli military carried out an attack on the Gaza Strip named Operation Cast Lead. The magnitude of the harm to the population was unprecedented: 1,385 Palestinians were killed, 762 of whom did not take part in the hostilities. Of these, 318 were minors under age 18. More than 5,300 Palestinians were wounded, of them over 350 seriously so. Israel also caused enormous damage to residential dwellings, industrial buildings, agriculture and infrastructure for electricity, sanitation, water, and health, which was on the verge of collapse prior to the operation. According to UN figures, Israel destroyed more than 3,500 residential dwellings and 20,000 people were left homeless.

A year after the slaughter of Gaza the misery of the people of Gaza continues. The Telegraph under the rather surreal headline "Gazans still angry one year on from Israeli offensive" describes the heartbreaking tragedy of one family (h/t John Caruso)

In a clearing at the northeast end of the Gaza Strip, amid a sea of drab canvas tents and half-cleared war detritus, a small, carefully tended flowerbed stands out amid dismal surroundings.

For the man who planted it, the blooms represents both an escape from the squalor of forced homelessness and a reminder of his once beloved garden. But it is the straggly red rosebush in the middle that is of special significance.
Until a year ago, Kamal Awaja would often spend the hour before dusk in his garden, teaching his six children the names of the trees and flowers, and encouragiong each one to pick a shrub as their own. Ibrahim, his nine-year-old son, chose the red rosebush.

But a year ago today, everything changed as Israel launched its military offensive against the Hamas militants who run Gaza. After a week of fierce fighting, the gun-barrel of a tank smashed through the family's living room window, forcing them to flee to nearby fields as their house was demolished.

Then, as they crept back at dawn to salvage warm clothes, Israeli soldiers opened fire. Both Awaja parents were wounded, and Ibrahim was hit fatally, dying in his father's arms as he tried to rescue him.
But reliving her son's death a year later, there is another, more harrowing detail that preys on Mrs Awaja's mind. She says that as she hid behind a wall while her husband limped away to find help, Israeli soldiers used Ibrahim's corpse, which was lying in a road, as target practice.

One wonders the level of inhumanity and dehumanization that allows the soldiers of the "most moral army" to use a nine year old child's body for target practice. The slaughter carried out by the Israelis has been followed by an inhuman blockade.

One year after the operation began, extensive areas in the Gaza Strip have yet to be rebuilt. Israel’s sweeping prohibition on the entry of construction materials prevents the rebuilding of houses that were destroyed and damaged, and more than 20,000 persons continue to live in overcrowded conditions in rented apartments, with relatives, or in tent camps. The prohibition also prevents rehabilitation of the infrastructure that was damaged: 90 percent of Gazans suffer electricity black-outs for four to eight hours a day, a result of the damage to infrastructure and of the severe shortage of industrial fuel. Some ten thousand Palestinians in the northern section of the Gaza Strip have no access to running water, and 80 million liters of raw and partially-treated sewage flows daily into open areas. The health system is unable to function properly due to the lack of medical equipment, and seriously ill patients have difficulty receiving necessary medical treatment.

And

A man who lost two daughters and his home can't visit his surviving 4-year-old girl in a Belgian hospital because Gaza's borders remain sealed. A 15-year-old struggles to walk on her artificial limbs, while dozens of other war amputees still await prostheses.

Couples postpone marriage because not enough apartments survived three weeks of bombing and shelling. Thousands are homeless,and damaged systems mean electricity and water are sporadic. Untreated sewage pours into the Mediterranean.

And

The UN Relief and Works agency (UNRWA) in Gaza told the BBC that public health was suffering as a result of inadequate and unsanitary water supplies, and there had been a rise in infant mortality.

While the lives of Gazans are mired in misery there are some hopeful signs. The global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign modeled on the campaign against apartheid South Africa is slowly gaining some momentum. More and more people are becoming aware of the plight of the Gazans and some are doing something about it. Just today the Viva Palestina organized convoy of 99 vehicles carrying supplies has begun entering Gaza. And then there are the (sadly few) brave voices from within Israel itself. Here is Gideon Levy:

One way or another, the year since December 27 was a year of shame for Israel, greater shame than any other time. It is shameful to be Israeli today, much more than it was a year ago. In the final tally of the war, which was not a war but a brutal assault, Israel's international status was dealt a severe blow, in addition to Israeli indifference and public blindness to what happened in Gaza.
...
Today it is more shameful to be an Israeli because the world, as opposed to Israelis, saw the scenes. It saw thousands of dead and injured taken in the trunks of cars to something between a clinic and a primitive hospital in an imprisoned and weakened region one hour from flourishing Tel Aviv, a region where the helpless had nowhere to run from Israel's arsenal. The world saw schools, hospitals, flour mills and small factories mercilessly bombed and blown up. It saw clouds of white-sulphur bombs billowing over population centers, and it saw burned children.

And then there was the Goldstone report. Ben Gurion said “it is not important what the Goyim say but what the Jews do.” In this case the person making the case against Israel is not a Goy. It is a well respected jurist and a zionist to boot. In spite of the US condemnation of the report, Goldstone is not going away. It has changed international perception about Israel in ways that were inconceivable just a short time ago. So who knows, maybe there will be a better tomorrow. One can always hope.

Update:

Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss has a summary of summaries of the state of Gaza today.

Aftonbladet's "blood libel"

2009-12-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35 000 people had signed up.
...
While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.

Donald Bostrom, Aftonbladet, August 17, 2009 (Translation)

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel urged the Swedish government on Sunday to condemn an article in a Swedish newspaper last week accusing the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers.
...
Mr. Netanyahu told ministers at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the article, published in the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet, was “outrageous” and compared it to a “blood libel,” referring to medieval anti-Semitic accusations that Jews ritually killed gentile children and collected their blood.
...
Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli finance minister, said: “Whoever does not distance himself from a blood libel such as this may not be so welcome now in Israel. We have a crisis until the government of Sweden understands otherwise.”
...
“Israel is under assault,” said Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office. The Aftonbladet article, he said, was part of a “premeditated campaign to vilify the State of Israel.” He added that anti-Semitic blood libels had led in the past to pogroms and attacks against Jews. “We cannot afford to turn the other way.”

Isabel Kershner, New York Times, August 23, 2009

Allegations that Israel plunders and trafficks Palestinians' organs are ugly, false, and harmful to peace efforts. No less dangerous—such libels spread.
...
Rational and responsible editorial judgment would have discarded Mr. Bostrom's surreal story at the outset. Such judgment would also have considered the real world effects of inciting yet more enmity in a volatile conflict, stoking misconceptions and raising greater hurdles to reconciliation.

But Aftonbladet's view of the parties involved appears strikingly crude, perceiving a realm populated by evil stick-figure Israelis preying mercilessly on romanticized Palestinian "stone-throwers." One cannot in this context forget Aftonbladet's unsavory pro-Nazi sentiments during the Hitler regime. This past seems to have done little to inoculate the paper against related bigotries today.

In an age of diminishing communication barriers, when false images and ideas can mislead hundreds of millions of people in minutes, it is more important than ever to reinforce the tenets of honorable journalism, and to expose malfeasance for all to see.

Behold, Aftonbladet.

Andrea Levin, Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2009

Israel has admitted that pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others without the consent of their families – a practice that it said ended in the 1990s, it emerged at the weekend.
The admission, by the former head of the country's forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called "antisemitic".
...
Israel's health ministry said all harvesting was now done with permission. "The guidelines at that time were not clear," it said

Ian Black, Guardian, December 20, 2009

... may I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they're to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up. And, finally, necrophilia is right out.

Vice Admiral Sir John Cunningham, Monty Python's Flying Circus

Let the show begin

2009-12-16T22:04:00.000-08:00

Asif Ali Zardari is president because the US leaned on Musharraf to grant him and his wife (and many others) amnesty from corruption charges through a presidential directive called the National Reconciliation Ordinance. The legality of the NRO has always been in question. No more it seems as the Pakistan Supreme Court has just declared it unconstitutional.
Pakistan's Supreme Court declared on Wednesday that an amnesty that had protected politicians, including President Asif Ali Zardari, from corruption and criminal charges, was unconstitutional.

The 17-judge court invalidated the National Reconciliation Order, saying in its ruling that the amnesty "seems to be against the national interest" and "violates various provisions of the Constitution."
...
The supreme court said its ruling revived all cases that had been suspended or withdrawn under the amnesty.

Zardari still has immunity due to his role as president. But many of his supporters do not. Look for lots of negotiations.

Blackwater's assasination list

2009-12-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

Given that the Pakistani Taliban have begun blaming the worst civilian bombings on Blackwater, this is not going to help.

In a stunning revelation, US private security service agency, Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, has claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had asked the agency to kill Pakistani nuclear scientist, A Q Khan.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Prince said the CIA had asked the Blackwater to eliminate Khan, however, authorities in Washington “chose not to pull the trigger.”

"Dr Khan’s inclusion in the target list would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged," Prince said.

War is Peace

2009-12-10T13:55:00.000-08:00

Whatever it is I am against it listens to Obama's speech so you don't have to. A true humanitarian is WIIIAAI.

We’re getting to the end, so let’s bring out some of that ol’ Obama inspirational magic: “So let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he’s outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.” And then the soldier who sees he’s outgunned calls in an air strike and blows her and her child to pieces.

Sebastian Rotella - "journalist"

2009-12-09T16:50:00.000-08:00

I just watched Sebastian Rotella being interviewed by Lehrer on the News Hour. (I had a bunch of scare quotes in the previous sentence but it seemed like I would have to put scare quotes around everything). The interview was about the charging of David Coleman Headley in connection with the Mumbai attacks. Rotella said that Headley had been trained in Afghanistan and as proof that he received extensive training in Afghanistan/Pakistan Rotella pointed to Headley's "ability" to walk into a Danish newspaper under the pretense of buying advertisement for his business. Why an American businessman needs to be trained to walk into a newspaper to purchase advertisement for his business, and why this training needed to be provided in Afghanistan or Pakistan, were questions whose answer only Rotella knows - and which Lehrer did not care to ask. I don't know what Headley is - he seems to have a rather checkered past - but I think I have a very good idea of what Rotella and Lehrer are not.

Murder at Guantanamo

2009-12-07T18:19:00.001-08:00

When the Bush administration and the Pentagon, in the person of Rear Admiral Harry Harris, classified the apparent suicide of three prisoners at Guantanamo as asymmetrical warfare they were justifiably ridiculed. It turns out the truth is much more disturbing. A group at Seton Hall studied the report generated after two years by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and exposed the ridiculousness of the idea that these three committed suicide.

The new study exposes how the NCIS report purports that all three prisoners on the prison's Alpha Block did the following to commit suicide:

• Braided a noose by tearing up their sheets and/or clothing.
• Made mannequins of themselves so it would appear to the guards they were asleep in their cells.
• Hung sheets to block the view into the cells.
• Stuffed rags down their own throats well past a point which would have induced involuntary gagging.
• Tied their own feet together.
• Tied their own hands together.
• Hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling.
• Climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around their necks and release their weight, resulting in death by strangulation.

The study also notes that there has never been any explanation of how the three bodies could have hung in the cells, undiscovered, for at least two hours, when the cells were supposed to be under constant supervision by roving guards and video cameras.
...
It is not even clear that it would be physically possible for the prisoners to commit suicide consistent with these facts. One of the Seton Hall study's authors, law student and former sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division Paul W. Taylor, stated: "We have three bodies and no explanation. How is it possible that all three detainees had shoved rags so far down their own throats that medical personnel could not remove them?

One of the murdered three, Yassar Talal Al Zahrani, was seventeen years old when he was picked up by the US.

A resounding success in the war on architecture

2009-11-29T11:30:00.000-08:00

Swiss voters have shown the world that when it comes to stupidity and irrationality they are no laggards. They are getting ready to change their constitution in order to demonstrate their irrational bona fides. Now that is a commitment to pure stupidity that we in the US can well admire. I mean, from time to time we pass moronic laws - DOMA springs to mind - but we don't usually go around changing our constitution to accommodate our most baseless fears. Wow, way to go Switzerland! The Guardian reports:

Swiss voters have approved a proposal to ban the construction of minarets, after a rightwing campaign that labelled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a respected polling institute show.

The projections based on partial returns indicate that support swung from 37% in favour of the ban a week ago to 59% in today's referendum.

Claude Longchamp, head of the gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection for state-owned DRS television showed approval in more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning the measure will become a constitutional amendment.

The dreaded Muslims are about to take over the brave and valiant and blond Swiss.

Muslims make up about 6% of Switzerland's 7.5 million people, many of them refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Fewer than 13% practice their religion, the government says, and Swiss mosques do not broadcast the call to prayer outside their buildings.

A whole 0.78% of the Swiss population perhaps praying in these mosques with minarets - clearly something to be really really scared of. And horrors, one might end up with scenes like these. But, no fear, the Swiss are fighting back

... with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.
...
On Thursday, Geneva's main mosque was vandalised when a pot of pink paint was thrown at the entrance. Earlier this month a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin's call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building.

The Most moral army in the world

2009-11-16T19:57:00.000-08:00

[h/t Finkelstein ]

Muslims disguised as Greeks

2009-11-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

From the St. Petersburg Times:

Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.
That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.
What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

The police keep repeating the "story" that Alexis (or is it AllahKiss) Marakis is a Greek Priest shielding this Jihadi operative. How dangerous this terrorist is can be understood from the lengths he went to construct his "cover."

Father Michael Eaccarino of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs says Marakis, 29, entered a Greek monastery as a teenager and became a priest nine years ago. He is studying theology at Holy Cross, a Greek Orthodox school in Massachusetts, and traveled to Tarpon Springs two months ago to work on his master's thesis. He has taken a vow of celibacy [e:probably preparing for the 72 virgins].
Eaccarino says the visiting priest got lost Monday after ministering to the elderly in a nursing home.

But our hero saw through all this because at the moment of truth the jihadi panicked.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.
"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.

It is such deep understanding of terrorist cultures that will help save our Fatherland. Of course the government is trying to smear our hero and have even charged him with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. His lawyer though is having none of this:

In an appearance in court on November 10, Attorney Jeff Brown – who is of counsel to Bruce – said that Bruce was followed into the parking garage of his apartment complex by the priest who allegedly made sexual comments and fondled the Marine’s crotch [e:nix the 72 virgins comment]. Brown claims that the Tampa Police Department’s version of events is “one-sided” and “tainted.” Added Lawyer Brown, "We are confident that the surveillance videos, the long 911 call, the eyewitnesses will all conclusively show that Lance Cpl. Bruce was attacked and was the victim in this case." Brown referred to the priest as a "bearded attacker" six times and used his client's military rank 17 times. The attorney criticized the local police for their handling of the case and suggested that the officer in charge is a “Marine basher”.

Yes, lets not forget the surveillance video

An exterior surveillance video of Tuesday's chase captured the two men in motion, said Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Laura McElroy:
"You see a very short, small man running, and an enormous, large muscular man chasing after him."

The terrorist of course is trying to preserve his tattered cover.

Father Marakis, citing biblical forgiveness, declined to press charges despite the stitches in his head.

License to kill

2009-11-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

Israeli rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, verbalizing the wet dreams of religious fanatics the world over, provides a license to kill the other if you feel threatened by them - or someone like them - or if you might possibly feel threatened by them some time in the future. Here is the reverend in his own words: (h/t Mondoweiss)

"It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,"

But it is all for the good

"If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder."

The good rabbi provides guidelines for who all to kill including

the slaying of "non-Jews who demand the land for themselves," and for, among other transgressions, "hostile blasphemy." Also "Those who, by speech, weaken our sovereignty" .... Even babies and children are fair targets, "if it is clear they will grow up to harm us".

Why are we in Afghanistan?

2009-11-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

It used to be that analyzing the whys and wherefores of conflicts was relatively easy. There were two economic models competing against each other. A state controlled model and a quasi free-market model. There were beneficiaries of each of these models and conflicts could be understood by their struggle to keep and increase their share of resources and power. The destruction of the Soviet Union meant that conflicts could no longer be framed in terms of the cold war, but still there seemed to be a logic to conflicts. Globalization was creating huge markets and the battle was on for resources and market share. For a while it even seemed that this struggle between the haves would maybe even benefit the have-nots. For a very short while. With the emergence of rival centers of power in Europe and China the Iraq war could be perhaps explained as an attempt by the US to control access to essential resources. Though the explanation seemed to be incomplete. That the US would want to control the resources of the middle east made sense. That it would chose to do so by occupying Iraq seemed less understandable.

Whatever logic there is for the occupation of Iraq there is even less for the occupation of Afghanistan. The US involvement in the 70's and 80's made sense in the context of the cold war. The US saw an opportunity to trap and then bleed the USSR. Once the Soviets were no longer there, there was no more US interest and the US pulled back. The initial foray into Afghanistan by the US in 2002 could be understood in the context of 9/11. The perpetrators of the attack were dead. However, the leadership of AlQaida was located in Afghanistan hosted by the Taliban. In the context of desire for revenge for the murder of 3000 people the invasion "made sense." After the rout of the Taliban the occupation did not. With the resurgence of the Taliban it still does not. The arguments used by the US President [insert name here] that the war in Afghanistan is essentially to prevent AlQaida from planning another attack on the US have, after almost eight years, become transparently ridiculous. (You can read Stephen Walt's articulate response to the current president's assertions at Foreign Policy.)

The 9/11 hijackers plotted in Hamburg and trained in Florida. The leadership of Al Qaeda, those that are still alive, are probably in the tribal areas of Pakistan. They can just as easily be in Somalia or Yemen. The bottom line is that if people want to plot against the US there is nothing that restricts them to a particular geographical region. Therefore, there is no need for us to be in control of a particular geographic region in order to thwart their planning. These are criminals who have, like many criminal operations, a global scope. And compared to other global criminal operations their capabilities are not very impressive. Hardly a reason to be occupying a country.

So why are we in Afghanistan? I really don't know. There is the pipelineistan scenario of Pepe Escobar. You can read about it here. But that reasoning again seems to me to be about as strong as the control of mideast oil argument was for the invasion of Iraq. Let me take a different view. My argument is weak, without much to back it, but hey, this is a blog.

The US after the first gulf war was the dominant power in the world. The alliance that the US was able to build on short notice was a statement about US power even more stupendous than the ease with which Saddam's army was vanquished. But the short history of humankind is replete with stories of empire, all of which share at least one thing in common: They are no more. It made sense then that there would be those in the US who would want to delay, if not totally avoid, the decline of American power. Hence the Project for a New American Century. The question then becomes how does one perpetuate empire? The US victory over the Soviet Union was in part due to the ability of the US to build multilateral alliances. Alliances are built against enemies, once enemies are vanquished alliances either fall apart or become a vehicle for the dominant partner's hegemony - this has held true from the Delian league to NATO. Therefore, according to this way of thinking the US has to dominate. And the instrument of domination has to be the military because this is an area where the US is so far ahead of anyone else that one can argue that this military superiority can be maintained well into the future. The instrument to be used is clear, but how the instrument is to be used is not clear.

In the 90's the major buzz in military circles was the Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA. The idea behind RMA was that technology developments had now made it possible for relatively small military forces to impose their will throughout the globe. The idea had been around for some time but the requirements of RMA for a highly developed military infrastructure had manifestly become available only now. The success of the US in the first gulf war provided support for the contention that the technological superiority of the US was sufficient for RMA. The further success in Kosovo strengthened this idea. But there really had not been a true test case. In each case, Kuwait, Kosovo, and then Afghanistan one could argue that other factors had contributed to the victory. A test case was needed which could then be used to cow any future opponents. Hence the need for an invasion of Iraq. And the need for keeping the number of troops relatively small. And the dismissal of Shinseki. And all the rest of it. Did we invade Iraq just to provide a test for RMA? There are many different agendas that support a particular policy. The desire to control mideast resources, ensuring the enrichment of Halliburton, the need for the Friedmans of the US to swagger, the paranoia of our Vice President and the psychological issues of our President all played a role. But something has to drive a policy and my contention is that the need for a demonstration project drove the invasion of Iraq. As a demonstration project the invasion of Iraq seemed to work beautifully - the mission was accomplished. Almost. The history of the Iraqi occupation has now put paid to the idea of RMA. It has now become necessary to come up with a different way to use the military instrument.

At this point one might ask why not give up on a military strategy altogether. Why not attempt other means, and surely, the biggest economy in the world can come up with other means. The answer I suppose is that power always tries to perpetuate itself. In the US power belongs to the military industrial complex. The military dominates US foreign policy. Therefore, the US response in the area of foreign policy will necessarily be a military one. RMA has failed, but there are other ideas out there. And these ideas need to be tested. Enter counter-insurgency or COIN. The occupation of Afghanistan is being driven by the need for testing the latest military doctrine (or fad). Again there are multiple factions that find the occupation of Afghanistan in their interest. I am sure the interests that Pepe Escobar refers to are there. The military industrial complex is certainly not unhappy. The billions of dollars that are being spent on the nation building campaign has to go into someone's pockets (and I am pretty sure those pockets do not belong to the Afghan public) and certainly they are not unhappy. But the driver is the military interest in finding something to replace RMA. Afghanistan is a testbed for the various ideas on how to use the US military to preserve the American empire. The poor people of Afghanistan be damned.

It's an Onion World

2009-10-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

There was the Nobel Peace Prize for the man ordering the killing of innocents in the frontier regions of Pakistan. And now this: (h/t Finkelstein)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his government on Tuesday to draw up proposals to amend the international laws of war after a damning UN report on its war in Gaza.

But thankfully some options are off the table

The security cabinet did not, however, discuss calls made by ministers for an internal investigation into the 22-day offensive at the turn of the year that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis

The little general also got into the act:

"It is in the interest of anyone fighting terrorism. We must give the IDF (Israeli army) the full backing to have the freedom of action," Barak said.

It would be positively terroristic to restrict the freedom to slaughter caged civilians. Give the man a prize.

A history of the Obama DOJ

2009-10-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald has this history of the Obama Department of Justice which pretty much says it all:

In February, the Obama DOJ went to court to block victims of rendition and torture from having a day in court, adopting in full the Bush argument that whatever was done to the victims is a "state secret" and national security would be harmed if the case proceeded. The following week, the Obama DOJ invoked the same "secrecy" argument to insist that victims of illegal warrantless eavesdropping must be barred from a day in court, and when the Obama administration lost that argument, they engaged in a series of extraordinary manuevers to avoid complying with the court's order that the case proceed, to the point where the GOP-appointed federal judge threatened the Government with sanctions for noncompliance. Two weeks later, "the Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, [tried] to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails."

In April, the Obama DOJ, in order to demand dismissal of a lawsuit brought against Bush officials for illegal spying on Americans, not only invoked the Bush/Cheney "state secrets" theory, but also invented a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim to insist Bush officials are immune from consequences for illegal domestic spying. The same month -- in the case brought by torture victims -- an appeals court ruled against the Obama DOJ on its "secrecy" claims, yet the administration vowed to keep appealing to prevent any judicial review of the interrogation program. In responses to these abuses, a handful of Democratic legislators re-introduced Bush-era legislation to restrict the President from asserting "state secrets" claims to dismiss lawsuits, but it stalled in Congress all year. At the end of April and then again in August, the administration did respond to a FOIA lawsuit seeking the release of torture documents by releasing some of those documents, emphasizing that they had no choice in light of clear legal requirements.

In May, after the British High Court ruled that a torture victim had the right to obtain evidence in the possession of British intelligence agencies documeting the CIA's abuse of him, the Obama administration threatened that it would cut off intelligence-sharing with Britain if the court revealed those facts, causing the court to conceal them. Also in May, Obama announced he had changed his mind and would fight-- rather than comply with -- two separate, unanimous court orders compelling the disclosure of Bush-era torture photos, and weeks later, vowed he would do anything (including issue an Executive Order or support a new FISA exemption) to prevent disclosure of those photos in the event he lost yet again, this time in the Supreme Court. In June, the administration "objected to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security." In August, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder announced that while some rogue torturers may be subject to prosecution, any Bush officials who relied on Bush DOJ torture memos in "good faith" will "be protected from legal jeopardy." And all year long, the Obama DOJ fought (unsuccessfully) to keep encaged at Guantanamo a man whom Bush officials had tortured while knowing he was innocent.

Gaza probe 'fatal blow' to peace

2009-10-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

So says Netanyahu. Irony is now officially dead.

Obama "is technically and legally wrong"

2009-09-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama should have gone into theater. His delivery is pitch perfect. His dramatic pauses, that somber mien, as he shovels out pile after pile of manure, is just awesome. As John Caruso said of his performance at the UN "if hypocrisy was fatal in large doses, Joe Biden would be president now. " The whole thing would be comical if only the consequences were not fatal for so many.

Obama's latest venture into drama was his breathless announcement of the "secret" Iranian nuclear facility. Iran had informed the IAEA about this "secret" facility and the IAEA had in turn informed the US. Those Iranians need to borrow Dick Cheney's man safe and learn how to do secret. Scott Ritter in the Guardian (h/t Finkelstein) has shredded any argument that what the Iranians did was, in Obamaspeak "breaking rules that all nations must follow":

The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA.
This agreement was signed by Iran in December 2004. However, since the "additional protocol" has not been ratified by the Iranian parliament, and as such is not legally binding, Iran had viewed its implementation as being voluntary, and as such agreed to comply with these new measures as a confidence building measure more so than a mandated obligation.

In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material.
While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong.

The media as well as the "liberal" interventionists who so fervently supported Obama are backing the Iran-is-the-new-evil theme with the same enthusiasm that their brethren the neocons (and the media of course) supported George W. Bush's many glorious adventures. Glenn Greenwald who seems increasingly isolated among the liberals tries to inject some sanity into the conversation

I think the number of his invitations to speak at "progressive" venues is about to take a nosedive.

Obama - A man of many words

2009-09-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

we are committed to demonstrating that international law is not an empty promise; that obligations must be kept; and that treaties will be enforced.

Barack Obama the man of law

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

The Convention Against Torture signed by the United State of America on 18th February 1984, ratified 21st October 1994.

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

Barack Obama on release of the torture memos.

Rethinking Afghanistan

2009-08-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

A documentary from Brave New Films tries to point out again and again and again the stupidity of occupying Afghanistan if the objective is to combat terrorism (h/t Steve Hynd at Newshoggers).

RIP Public Option

2009-08-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press is reporting that the Obama administration is getting ready to bid the public option bye bye. While I think the public option in the form the Obama administration was pushing it was to little, too late, Obama himself viewed the option differently. Barak Obama had this to say about the public option:

one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest.

But that is so one month ago!

The AP reporter provides the justification for the U turn:

Such a concession probably would enrage Obama's liberal supporters but could deliver a much-needed victory on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers.

So that's all right then. No health care reform, but our President will be victorious. Yay!

Update:

Ian Welsh at Open Left explains the "problem" with the public option and how it could be "cured." It is so succinct I am lifting it wholesale:

To put it really simply, if you don't need a profit, and if you are only as efficient as your competitors, you will drive them out of business if you are not constrained in some fashion from doing so (capital is the usual fashion, since non profits have trouble raising it. In the health care context, arranging it so the public option takes on more unhealthy people is the more likely way to do it.)

Since a real public option properly created to not be constrained from doing so WILL drive private insurers out of business, it will not be allowed to happen. It may be called a "public option", but it won't actually be allowed to operate as a public option should. A public option which won't destroy the insurers in time, is also a public option which can't drive down prices effectively.

All else is shadow play.

That was then, this is now (health care edition)

2009-08-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

You have to admit though, he sounds so sincere (h/t Cannonfire).

After Baitullah

2009-08-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

While Baitullah Mehsud's death will provide a breathing space to the Pakistani establishment, it is a minor victory given the extent of the challenges facing the government in this region. Jason Burke of the Guardian details some of the deep rooted structural problems for which the TTP is simply a part of the response. He notes the marginalization of the FATA population which will continue to give rise to many more Baitullahs:

The Pashtun tribes of the FATA have the lowest levels of literacy, economic development and infrastructural development of anywhere in Pakistan. They are not considered full citizens. Pushed to the margins, they are, in one sense, trying to fight their way into the centre of national political and economic life.
... this marginalisation is reflected within the society of the North-West frontier too. The militants are often men who would normally be consigned to the edges of a tribe in terms of status, wealth and power. Mangal Bagh, a major militant leader in the Khyber Agency, is a former truck driver. Mullah Fazlullah, who masterminded the recent Taliban take over of Swat, worked as a labourer on Pakistan's only ski lift. In Bajaur and Mohmand agencies, the pattern is repeated with senior militants including mechanics, small shopkeepers, itinerant religious teachers.

Under different circumstance such marginalization would lead to spontaneous uprisings which would quickly be quelled by authorities. But now, Burke points out, there is an ideological and logistical support which provides the uprisings with staying power. This support is from what Burke calls the Deobandi complex.

There is religious homogeneity: the conservative southwest Asian Deobandi strand of Sunni Islam that has established itself with its system of mosques and free schools across the region. There is ethnic homogeneity: the Pashtuns. There is a commercial sector of big businessmen involved in smuggling, transport, timber, drugs and a range of legitimate businesses. There is political representation: parties such as Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami. There is diplomacy with connections to the Gulf and elsewhere in the Islamic world. There are significant flows of cash in and out, often through remittances from overseas workers. There is a broadly accepted culture: the conservative, rural, religiously-infused values of the Pashun hill tribes. And there is a military: the various Taliban groups.

Musharraf's government allowed these marginalized people to feel power. Not just in FATA but throughout the NWFP and even (through the Lal Majid) in the heart of the capital. The memory of power does not fade easily. This is not something that will disappear anytime soon.

Prince of Darkness

2009-08-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Scahill is reporting that Eric Prince the founder of the company formerly known as Blackwater has been accused of murder of individuals cooperating with a federal probe into its activities. (As opposed to the slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians which is of course not hat big a deal)

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

Don't forget, this guy was, effectively, acting in the name of the American people in Iraq.

Update:

Here is a followup interview of Jeremy Scahill on Countdown:

Scahill points out that investigation into Blackwaters gun smuggling operation was blocked by the government. One of the results of the gun-running operation was the delivery of US weapons to the PKK which many in Turkey still point to as proof that the US is out to destabilize Turkey. Scahill finishes with "We can talk about Blackwater until we are blue in the face but who deployed Blackwater? Who hired Blackwater? Who, unfortunately President Obama, continues to pay Blackwater millions of dollars from the Federal payroll?" As Olbermann said "The mind reels."

The Granai Massacre

2009-07-14T18:44:00.000-07:00

This is a somewhat low quality video of a talk by Photojournalist Guy Smallman on the massacre in the village of Granai in the Farah province of Afghanistan on May 4, 2009. (h/t the-sauce.org) A US airstrike killed a 140 villagers, 93 of them children.

Near the end of the video Smallman says "Somebody somewhere gave the order ..." I wonder how much of their humanity is left to them.

Torture Photos

2009-07-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

David Swanson reports at AfterDowningStreet (h/t A Tiny Revolution) that he has seen more than 1200 photos and several videos that the Obama administration is keeping "secret," presumably so as not to upset the delicate sensibilities of the American people. Swanson points out that this is only a small proportion of a much larger collection of photos.

The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) of Australia revealed several of these photographs, video of the head slamming, and video of prisoners forced to masturbate, as part of a news report broadcast in 2006. But the full collection has not been made available to the public or to a special prosecutor, although it was shown to members of Congress in 2004. When these photos are eventually made public, I encourage you to take a good look at them. After you get over feeling ill, it might be appropriate to consider Congress' past 5 years of inaction. You'll be able to feel sick all over again.
[...]
The over 1,200 images that I've seen add to some stories we've seen sketched out before. We've seen the body of murdered prisoner Manadel al-Jamadi packed in ice. We've seen Spc. Charles Graner posing with it, and Spc. Sabrina Harman doing the same. But the fuller collection shows the process of cleaning the body up. A giant gash in the top of the man's head is stitched up, his eye patched, etc. Photos, some of which have been made public, show floors covered with the blood of this victim.

We've also seen a few images (one, two, three) of a man attacked and bitten by dogs. But the larger series of photos shows us much more of the wounds on his legs and arms, as well as his identification number: 153863.

Another prisoner with an ID (153399) is shown missing a good portion of his head. This is one of a number of dead bodies shown in the photographs. SBS (the Australian news outlet) found an Army report on his death and concluded that these dead prisoners had likely been shot by guards during a riot or murdered by guards in other circumstances. Others have claimed mortar attacks from outside the prison are to blame.
[...]
There are three photos of a little boy, naked, in a robe, and fully dressed. While it is very disturbing to see this little child's photos in the middle of this revolting collection, I have no idea what they are doing there or whether he was mistreated, or whether anyone was threatened with his mistreatment. But I do know that the leading lawyer who facilitated our national torture campaign and famously said that a U.S. president has the right to crush a child's testicles is a professor at a prestigious university, while his boss is sitting as a life-time judge in the Ninth Circuit because Congress refuses to impeach him. The current excuse for delay is that the Justice Department plans to release its internal report (from the Office of Professional Responsibility) very soon, just as it has been promising for many months.

Fed with no oversight

2009-07-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

It is late in the financial crisis, do you know where your money is?(h/t A Tiny Revolution)

Amira Hass

2009-07-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

This is one impressive lady (h/t Pulse).

Iran

2009-06-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

Abbas Barzegar has a sensible commentary on the happenings in Iran (and the media coverage thereof) in the Guardian (h/t Pulse) which is a relief from the many hyped "purple finger" columns that have dominated the news.

Our fantastic political analyses spring from idealistic liberal hopes and are symptomatic of the larger problem we have in understanding political Islam. That this crisis has been presented as one between the "Iranian people" and its government is among the greatest errors of the media coverage this week. The competing crowds of millions for and against Ahmadinejad should have been enough to indicate that the conflict was as much a social issue as it was a political one. But phrases such as "a lot of Iranians" or "Mousavi's broad constituency" make weaker soundbites than "the Iranian people." So, from Sarkozy to Sky News, the only "Iranian people" that seemingly exist this week are those wearing green.
But bias is not my gripe; the good Muslim v bad Muslim game is an old one. I care about misrepresentation. By ignoring the millions of Ahmadinejad supporters (even after counting for mass fraud) journalists and pundits have mistaken Iranian Islamists as communist bureaucrats on a payroll that might easily fold when forced to attack other Iranians. Instead, we have seen Basiji volunteers jump at the opportunity to smash their batons across the faces of men, women, and anyone else in their way.
Iranian Islamists' allegiances do not lie with saffron rice and Hafez's poems. They love God, then country, grind through life as factory workers and farmhands in addition to getting PhDs in engineering and medicine. Iranians loyal to their Islamic project recite prayers for their president, relish the martyrdom of Hussein, and wait for the return of their messiah. So did anyone really think that his terrestrial representative would allow more than a week of bank burnings and highway closures? Are we really shocked that the military would close rank, dissidents would be arrested, and political threats be neutralised as 250,000 US troops sit on the country's borders and Cheney's $400m support for regime subversion gets stamped by Obama?

Instead of trying to understand the complexity of Iranian Islamism and its fusion into the international political system, intellectuals in the west have dismissed its architects and supporters as brainwashed fanatics controlled by wicked priests. We have lived vicariously through its dissidents and exiles. We have cherished stories such as Reading Lolita in Tehran and recommended films such as Not Without My Daughter and Persepolis to our closest family and friends. It was only a matter of time, we so desperately believed.

What is happening in Iran is fascinating, exciting, heartwarming, because it shows the willingness of people to stand up for what they want. But just because this set of people put a higher priority on things we might feel are most desirable does not mean that there is not another set of people that have a different set of priorities. A set of priorities best articulated by Ahmedinejad. In the US, the only things we know about Ahmedinejad are that he thinks Iran has rights to nuclear power and that he, at the very least, minimizes the holocaust. In Iran, he is probably known and liked, or disliked, for much more. A system is confronting the dissatisfaction of a portion of the populace. In times of such confrontation nations develop if the ruling establishment is willing to accept compromises to satisfy, or at least mollify, the disaffected elements of the society, or the crisis deepens further. The rulers of Iran are not immature in their understanding of power so I would be surprised if they went with the latter option.

An analysis

2009-06-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Writing in the Guardian Pankaj Mishra provides a sensible analysis of the situation in Pakistan. In particular his response to the view of many western pundits is refreshingly sane. He comments on this statement from Joe Klein in Time about a meeting Holbrooke had with students in Peshawar:

But the most telling meeting was with young adults, many of them students, from the northwest tribal areas. A young man said he had known one of those killed in a Predator drone strike. "You killed 10 members of his family," he said. Another said the refugees created by the Predator strikes had destabilized his village. "Are many of them Taliban?" Holbrooke asked.

"We are all Taliban," the young man replied. It seemed a statement of solidarity, not affiliation, but as a way of revealing how mixed loyalties and deep resentments make Pakistan so difficult to handle, it was shocking all the same.

To which Mishra says:

One wishes Klein had paused to wonder if people anywhere else would wholeheartedly support a foreign power that "collaterally" murders 50 relatives and friends from the air for every militant killed.

And in reference to a comment by India's answer to Thomas Friedman:

But this does not amount to popular endorsement of drone attacks. Last month Fareed Zakaria informed Jon Stewart on the Daily Show that Pakistan is emerging from its state of denial since his Pakistani friends, who previously opposed the drone attacks, now tell him: "You know what? If that's the only thing that will work, kill those guys." Some members of Pakistan's tiny elite, where Zakaria's native informants come from, may long to exterminate the brutes: they fear, often correctly, Islamic extremists as embodying the rage and frustration of the country's underprivileged majority. But as the suffering of civilians in Swat becomes known, the highly qualified public support for military action will wane quickly.

It is an interesting article and well worth a read.

The speech to the Muslim world

2009-06-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

A thoughtful appreciation of the President's approach to the Middle East from a former skeptic.

Some accountability

2009-06-08T18:59:00.000-07:00

There are moments that become etched into your mind. The day Ken Saro-Wiwa was killed is one of those. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I had not really believed that they would actually go through and kill him. But they did. And now, fourteen years later, finally some small measure of accountability. Royal Dutch Shell, which had found Saro-Wiwa a turbulent irritant, settled rather than face a trial over complicity in Saro-Wiwa's death.

New York– After legal battles lasting nearly fourteen years, oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has been forced to pay a $15.5 million out-of-court settlement. Plaintiffs from the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta have successfully held Shell accountable for complicity in human rights atrocities committed against the Ogoni people in the 1990s, including the execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The legal action is one of the few cases brought under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute that have been resolved in favor of the plaintiffs. The settlement includes establishment of a $5 million trust to benefit local communities in Ogoni.
“We congratulate the plaintiffs on their victory. Let there be no doubt that Shell has emerged guilty. With this settlement, Shell is seeking to keep the overwhelming evidence of its crimes away from the scrutiny of a jury trial,” said Ben Amunwa from the UK-based remember saro-wiwa project. “Shell could not stand the damage of bad publicity around this human rights case. Global campaigners have helped to highlight Shell’s abuses and we share in this historic victory.”

Our leaders and us

2009-05-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

If ever proof was needed that our leaders see us as gullible fools, here is Senator Reid . (h/t Arthur Silber)

REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.

QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? I mean (OFF-MIKE).

REID: I can’t -- I can’t -- I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States. I think the majority -- I speak for the majority of the Senate.

QUESTION: But you don’t want to (OFF-MIKE).

REID: Only until we get the plan.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) of your position (OFF-MIKE)

REID: We’ll wait until we get the plan.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) mean that Guantanamo will remain open indefinitely (OFF-MIKE)

REID: I repeat: I agree with McCain, Bush and Obama: Guantanamo should be closed because it makes us less safe and it will be closed. We’re waiting for a plan from the president and (OFF- MIKE).

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

REID: Can’t say anything but what I’ve said, and re-said it three times. Can’t say it four times. That’s how I feel.
...
QUESTION: But Senator, Senator, it’s not that you’re not being clear when you say you don’t want them released. But could you say -- would you be all right with them being transferred to an American prison?

REID: Not in the United States.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

REID: I think I’ve had about enough of this.

History

2009-05-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

Please go visit Lawrence of Cyberia.

And so it goes

2009-05-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

It seems TARP (the Taliban Recruitment Program) is working as predicted.

A banned jihadi charity accused of links to November's Mumbai attacks has resurfaced in north-western Pakistan, where it is running an extensive aid programme for people fleeing fighting in Swat.
The Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) offers food, medical care and transport to villagers fleeing into Mardan district, where authorities are struggling to cope with an influx of more than 500,000 people.
But the charity, according to experts, officials and some of its own members, is the renamed relief wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a group the Pakistani government banned last December after the UN declared it a terrorist organisation.
Jamaat-ud-Dawa is considered to be the public face of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group accused of orchestrating the Mumbai attack on hotels and cafes that killed at least 173 people.

What to do?

2009-05-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

Philip Giraldi makes some sensible recommendations.

Again, as in Afghanistan, what should Obama do? Providing technical support to help secure the Pakistani missiles is a good step that is already taking place and is indisputably in America’s national interest, but a halt to drone strikes and disengagement from Pakistan’s fractious internal politics would send a welcome message that the United States will cease its interference. President Zardari is seen as a U.S. puppet, precisely the same perception that first weakened and then brought down his predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Removing the heavy U.S. footprint from a highly volatile situation would increase the president’s authority, not weaken it. Pakistan has an interest in curbing both terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and its own domestic Taliban. It should be encouraged to do so on its own terms, not given marching orders and then rebuked when the orders prove impossible to execute. The more Washington interferes, the worse the situation will inevitably become, an axiom that has been true almost everywhere in the world of late, the poisonous fruit of the "Bush Doctrine."

Leaving Central Asia alone might seem like a radical step to some, but it could be the only option that would actually improve the situation, forcing the people of the region to come up with their own answers and solutions. It would also be better than turning on the nightly news and watching wave after wave of U.S. helicopters evacuating staff from the roofs of the embassies in Kabul and Islamabad. We Americans have been there before.

True

2009-05-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: "Beheadings and use of human shields by Taleban forces are not a blank cheque for the Pakistani army.
"Winning the war, but also the peace, in Swat can only be achieved by minimising civilian suffering."

The greatest threats

2009-05-11T10:14:00.001-07:00

The threats to Pakistan's stability are the problems of incompetent governance, an unequal distribution of wealth and resources, and a reluctance by the feudal elites and the military to share power. A recent poll seems to indicate that, regardless of what Ms. Clinton says, the Pakistanis do not view the threats to themselves the same way as the US.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The prospect of Islamist militants destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan is a global fear, but only 10 percent of Pakistanis saw terrorism as their biggest worry, according to an opinion poll released on Monday.

For the vast majority economic issues such as inflation, unemployment and poverty were a greater problem, according to a survey by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a Washington-based organization chaired by Senator John McCain.

The Taleban are a symptom, not only of the desperation of a people facing grinding poverty and incompetent governance, but also of the lack of viable alternatives to express their despair. As long as the Taleban were a distant threat the people did not pay them much attention. In fact, many in Pakistan saw them as a legitimate resistance to occupation. As long as that was the case, the Pakistan army was reluctant to openly move against them, in spite of the tremendous pressure coming from the US. The shift of public opinion after the flogging video surfaced and, more importantly, after the Taleban expansion into Buner, gave them an opening which they have taken. But the opening is limited. The plight of the refugees is going to move public opinion against the military as will the tales of the civilians who will die because of this offensive. As opposed to the somewhat simplistic view of the military in the west, the Pakistan military derives much of its legitimacy from popular opinion. Musharraf's opening of the media means they can no longer rely on state propaganda to cover up for their shortcomings. If they see a major shift in public opinion against them they will respond accordingly. For the military to accomplish what they want to do in the short period they have will require real leadership. They will have to move quickly to complete the offensive portion of their action and take the lead in rebuilding efforts which will have to be conducted with transparency and efficiency. It remains to be seen whether Kayani can provide this leadership

Refugees

2009-05-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

The flood of refugees escaping from the Pakistani army assault on the Taleban in Swat will soon increase as the military tries to take what it should have secured before their assault on Buner. This does not bode well for the future of Pakistan. This is clearly a situation where the military is attacking the citizens of its own country. This is not East Pakistan redux, but the parallels are there. The military attacking the citizens has never redounded in favor of the military. And there will be consequences, both short term and long term, for the status of the military, and hence its ability to wield power. This increased flux of refugees, apart from being tragic by its very existence will weaken the government both directly and indirectly. Directly, by exposing their incompetence and their lack of empathy for the people they supposedly represent. This will leave the door open to those who present themselves as an alternative.

However, the Government’s inability to cope with the flood of refugees is now angering many people — and opening another window for Islamist political parties and illegal militant groups. Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest Islamic political party, which has openly opposed the army operation against the militants, is most active in all the camps, providing the refugees with all kinds of help. Members of banned radical groups are also reported to have been seen working there.

And indirectly by exacerbating the existing tensions within the country. The economic impact of a million displaced people trying to find some way of replacing their likelihood is going to be another hit on a fragile economy. The NWFP and the economic center of Karachi will be further destabilized by the influx of refugees. The danger is not exactly lost on the Pakistanis. This from an editorial in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

PEOPLE are pouring out of Swat and they must be housed and fed without delay. Refugees who have fled other conflict zones in the country’s northwest also need to be provided with basic necessities such as tents, food, water and healthcare. At the risk of repeating ourselves, we urge the government to help the displaced who have been scarred for life by both the Taliban and the security establishment’s response to militant activities. Having a home is something one takes for granted, and it is perhaps impossible from this remove to relate to the plight of people running for their lives clutching a few possessions. The agonies suffered by a trader, farmer or labourer who may now have to beg for bread can never be fully comprehended by analysts tapping on keyboards, however furiously. The internally displaced have paid a heavy price for the policy failures of successive governments. They have seen the brutality of the Taliban from close range. Practical measures are needed now to assure the dispossessed that the state is on their side and will not let them down, come what may. If the refugees are not afforded a semblance of dignity, the battle for hearts and minds is as good as lost. A hungry child, if he or she lives, may one day be a bitter adult willing to lend an ear to the voice of obscurantism.

The problem though will not wait until that hungry child grows up. And the likelihood of the government responding with any level of competence is remote. The President is widely seen as a crook who is willing to sell out the country to the US in exchange for their support of his criminal enterprise. The columnist Ayaz Amir in the News:

With the skeletons in his closet, Zardari can be expected only to look out for himself. He is already indebted to the Americans for helping him to come to power. He knows that if the US pulls the rug from under his feet he is lost. He mumbles rehearsed words which sound worse than platitudes. It is too much to expect that he can stand up against the odds and court, where necessary, American displeasure.

The Dawn editorial writer is a bit, (but only a bit) more circumspect.

Given the track record of a bureaucracy known for its incompetence, lethargy and dishonesty, the government should perhaps consider the option of channelling at least a portion of relief funds through reputable private-sector organisations.

The refugees are a harbinger of much instability. If, as seems very likely, the Pakistani army's assault on Swat was in response to our pressure, we really did not do ourselves a favor.

Short term and long term

2009-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

It was 2003 and the conversation was an intense one between a high ranking Pakistani military officer and a politician from PATA - the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas which include the Swat valley. The politician was arguing that the government needed to move quickly to fully incorporate the PATA region into the political structure of Pakistan - give it all the rights that any other region had. And the officer was mostly in agreement. At least that was what I took away given my less than perfect language skills. Neither the politician nor the officer was at a high enough level to make an agreement. But they were high enough to have an influence. I have often thought of that conversation since then. I knew then that it was not in our short term interest for there to be any change in the political status of the frontier region as that would mean uncertainty. We were engaged in Afghanistan - successfully it seemed at the time - and we really did not need uncertainty on the Pakistan side of the Durand line. I don't know if US influence scuppered the deal. Or even if the Pakistanis had progressed to the point of having a deal to scupper. What I do know is if there was any US involvement it was probably to the detriment of any change in the political status of the PATA. We would have acted for our short term interest and against the long term interest of Pakistan. Looking at the situation in Swat and other PATA regions today it turns out our actions would have also been against the long term interest of the US.

If one, for the most part, accepts the articulation of the reasons behind US foreign policy, it seems our long term interests are mostly hurt when we work against the long term interests of other states. Overthrowing Mosaddegh in 1953 gave us a client state in Iran for a quarter century but planted the seeds for the 1979 revolution. Mosaddegh was not someone hostile to the US and one can envision an alternate history in which we had worked with Mosaddegh and Iran would have become and remained a strong and reliable ally. Giving Zia the green light in Pakistan to overthrow Bhutto probably looked like a good move at the time. Removing a nationalizing politician who had sworn to acquire nuclear weapons must have seemed a no-brainer. But the retardation of the democratic process and the Islamization of the country under Zia has, in the long term, been to the detriment of our interests. Stephen Kinzer noted, I think in his book Overthrow, that we want the governments we put in place in the various countries we intervene in to be democratic and to look after our interests. Unfortunately, these are contradictory aims. Rulers who look after our interests before they look after the interests of their own people can by definition not be democratic.

Looking at our entry into the disastrous adventure called the AfPak strategy it is too much to hope that the US has learned any lessons. The problem in Pakistan is not of an increase in religious fanaticism, it is that of a populace increasingly disillusioned with the various power centers that rule the country. In this situation the Taliban gain strength not because people support them but because they do not support the government. The two power centers in Pakistan are the feudals, represented by the political parties, and the military. For brief periods of time the populace ties their hopes to one or the other, only to seem them dashed in short order. What is needed in Pakistan is the development of reasonably competent governance which at least appears to be responsive to the needs of the people. To ask the US to provide this would be ridiculous. However, in a sane world, it would be reasonable to ask the US not to embark upon policies that aggravate the situation. Unfortunately, it seems we are not living in a sane world.

The Swat agreement was disturbing, to say the least, and the Taliban's move into Buner convinced even those who thought they could buy some time (and the people of Swat some peace) that the Taliban had no intention of halting their advance. But the Pakistan army's heavy handed response in Buner, spurred on it seems by US demands that the Pakistanis take harsh action against the Taleban, is only going to sharpen the contradictions that already exist in society. The abruptness of the Pakistani action at a time of increasing criticism from US government representative, and the lack of any planning all suggest a response to external pressure. Pakistan is in a brittle state and the sharp increase in the number of internally displaced people is going to severely strain the social fabric with the beneficiaries being any group that rises up against the established order. The Taleban are not going to take over the country, or the nukes, regardless of what the fearmongers in Washington say. But the process can put sufficient strain on the country to cause it to fracture among other lines. And there are so many of them

The situation in Baluchistan keeps getting worse and worse. A separation movement which has existed in some form of another since the birth of Pakistan is gaining strength. The death of Akbar Bugti, a cunning old feudal lord who was leading the separatists, has introduced a qualitative change. Akbar Bugti had been through enough twists and turns of Pakistan's history, being at one time the Governor and at another the Chief minister of Balochistan, that he knew when to push and when not to. His death leaves the movement in much more radical hands.

Karachi, the commercial heart of Pakistan, is always simmering with barely contained conflict between ethnic groups that have lived side-by-side for generations without integrating. The dominant ethnic group are the descendants of migrants from India whose ancestors came to Pakistan after the 1947 partition of British India into Pakistan and India. The thuggish MQM which is based in this group is in violent conflict with the ANP which represents one of the other major ethnic group in Karachi, the Pashtuns. Most of this group is descendant of economic migrants from the North West Frontier Province. The activities of the Pakistan army in Buner and Swat is sure to swell this population increasing the .

Pakistan is home to a large Shia minority which is anathema to the more fanatical sunni groups. Under normal conditions they are not a major problem. Increasing instability in the country is sure to provide opportunities for murder and mayhem from this group.

And while the Taleban are not going to be taking over Pakistan any time soon they will be a major problem in the North West. The role of the Taleban as the resistance fighting the foreign occupier also makes them appear more sympathetic than they would otherwise be. The habit of the US army of calling in airstrikes on civilian groups is not helping matters any. Or the brutality and immorality of Bagram. Killing the Taleban will not resolve the problem of the Taleban, however strange that sounds. The Taleban are a symptom. They are a short term problem. By focusing on the short term we are making sure we have a long term problem.

The US has the most powerful military the world has ever known and maybe that is the problem. As Robin Williams said "“See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.” Maybe that powerful military is draining the US of the sanity needed to think of the long term.

A chink in the armor?

2009-04-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

A court has actually refused to play ball with the Obama administration on the state security claim. This is a hopeful sign that perhaps some day the people we tortured will get some measure of justice.

A federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday ruled that five men who say they were detained and tortured as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program can proceed with a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary they say was involved in their ill-treatment.

The ruling was a setback to efforts by the Bush and Obama administrations, which both supported throwing out the lawsuit on the grounds that it risked revealing state secrets.The case is shaping up to be a landmark, as it is the first lawsuit filed by former detainees in the rendition program against a private company allegedly implicated in torture and illegal detention.

That firm is Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, of San Jose, Calif., which the San Francisco Chronicle reports was identified as the CIA's "aviation services provider" in a 2007 Council of Europe report.

Said the court:

"According to the government's theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law," Judge Michael Hawkins said in the 3-0 ruling.

Allowing the government to shield its conduct from court review simply because classified information is involved "would ... perversely encourage the president to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of judicial process," Hawkins said
...
"As the founders of this nation knew well, arbitrary imprisonment and torture under any circumstances is a 'gross and notorious ... act of despotism,' " Hawkins said, citing language from a 2004 Supreme Court decision.

Looking forward looking back

2009-04-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Today, and every day, we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, to confront these scourges -- to fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us, or wrap ourselves in the false comfort that others' sufferings are not our own. Instead we have the opportunity to make a habit of empathy; to recognize ourselves in each other; to commit ourselves to resisting injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take

Words from Barak Obama

“Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

Barak Obama turning the channel

"Some things in life need to be mysterious, .. Sometimes in life you want to just keep walking. History has changed. It does change. We have a new administration, a new way. Sometimes I think just keep walking. Don't always be issuing papers and reports.."

Peggy Noonan turning the channel

But having vowed to end the practices, Obama should use all the influence of his office to stop the retroactive search for scapegoats.
This is not another Sept. 11 situation, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed.

David Broder turning the channel

Even a blind squirrel

2009-04-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

The nutcase who accurately represents Israel's view of the Palestinians also seems to have a good idea about the parameters within which the Obama administration is going to function. (h/t WIIIAI)

The Obama Administration will put forth new peace initiatives only if Israel wants it to, said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in his first comprehensive interview on foreign policy since taking office.

"Believe me, America accepts all our decisions," Lieberman told the Russian daily Moskovskiy Komosolets.

Then Lieberman does something a bit strange. After having screamed for some time that Iran was the existential threat to Israel he has changed his mind

During the interview, Lieberman said Iran is not Israel's biggest strategic threat; rather, Afghanistan and Pakistan are.

Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss thinks that "Lieberman might be sensing that Israel's strategic worth to the US is shifting and it is important that they get on board with President Obama's foreign policy priorities." A case of I support your murders and you support mine.

When the President does it

2009-04-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

"When the President does it that means it is not illegal." said Richard M. Nixon in 1977. And so concurs Barak Obama 32 years later. Brushing aside the fact that prosecution of torturers is required under the "supreme law of the land," Barak Obama has regally decided that he and his administration do not need to follow the law. The UN rapporteur on torture begs to differ.

VIENNA (Reuters) – President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who used waterboarding on terrorism suspects amounts to a breach of international law, the U.N. rapporteur on torture said.

"The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.

"Torturers to pay for crimes"

2009-04-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

No, not in the US. In Turkey. And it is a civil penalty. But you take what you can get.

Hearts and minds

2009-04-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

From the Pakistani newspaper The News: (h/t Pulse)

Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.

Clearly more attention is being paid to human rights - like the right not to have your child murdered - since the bad Bush days are over and the "progressives" have come to power in Washington.

Chomsky

2009-04-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

In this interview Chomsky talks about the fundamental problem of the lack of engagement and political participation. It is not an exhortation - Chomsky does not do exhortation - it is an analysis that is so insightful as to be totally obvious. People get frustrated with Chomsky because they say he does not provide solutions, just lucid expositions of the problem. I think the charge is a bit misplaced as this interview may make clear:

Pratchett

2009-04-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

Something to smile about.